


ask me no questions (and i'll tell you no lies)

by ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Breaking Bonds, F/F, F/M, M/M, TW: Self Harm, TW: Suicide, Tarsus IV, This story is a it gets worse before it gets better, there's tarsus in this so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-06-06 15:16:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15197537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly/pseuds/ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly
Summary: James Tiberius Kirk survived Tarsus IV.Now, he has to survive living on Vulcan where he meets Lady Amanda Grayson, her bondmate, and most importantly, her son.





	1. But Everyone Watches Them Go

**Author's Note:**

> Head the trigger warnings!!! Please!!! If you need to talk, come yell at me at ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly@gmail.com  
> This story is a 'it gets worse before it gets better'  
> I am working on it, but life is crazy and terrible and 12-hour shifts are the worst so I can't guarantee any update schedule but know I'm working on it (and by working on it i mean staring at a blank page hoping it will write itself) (i'm mostly kidding) anyway, hope you like it.  
> Comments and kudos please, I thrive on positive feedback

        Jim pressed his forehead to the glass in front of him and tried to pretend he wasn’t listening to the screams that he was pretty sure would remain in his head forever. T’Raia had finally fallen asleep, curled up in his arms. There were only four other people on the shuttle, and even then, they weren’t people. They were Vulcans. Jim’s mind was reeling. He had been forced to say goodbye to the only seven people who would understand, to a certain extent, what he was going through. But yet, he had done things that they would never understand. And he would lose T’Raia soon, also. Fear and pain lashed through his mind, ripping open another wound. _“Tarsus will eventually be put behind you guys. You just have to talk about it,”_ the psychiatrist on the ship had told him as he had cradled T’Raia to his chest. _Ok. I can do this. Hell, I’m 13 and I survived this massacre already, right?_ He had told himself. And now, Jim was being sent to a planet where he wouldn’t be able to talk about it. _Why did Mom have to send me to Vulcan? I still have family in Iowa. Does it really matter where I go, though? I will never talk about it. These will be secrets I will carry to my grave._ Jim felt his hands clench as he slowly acknowledges that, regardless as to whether he went to Vulcan or Iowa, he wouldn’t be able to talk about Tarsus IV. T’Raia stirred, sensing his distress through the parent bond. Jim focused on evening his breathing out, and spreading his hands across the two-year-old’s back instead of the fists they had been clenched in. _It’s ok. I’ve carried this hell in my body by myself for long enough. I’ve carried Sam’s grave inside me for long enough, what’s a little more?_ At the same time, rage flashed through him, hot and numbing, and he shoved it out, trying to project it towards the Vulcans. _THIS IS YOUR FAULT!_ T’Raia stirred once again, and Jim curled around the little Vulcan in his lap. Scaring her given the trauma they would go through on Vulcan anyway would not be good for her. Jim knew, logically, (god, he was already talking like them), that it wasn’t their fault, but if it wasn’t theirs whose was it? The Federation’s? Jim’s mom and uncle for taking him and Sam there to begin with? Kodos’? His? He breathes slowly through his nose, trying to pace his breathing with T’Raia’s, and focusing on the feel of her heart beating against Jim’s palm. The Vulcan atmosphere was going to be hell Jim could tell already; his body could barely handle the oxygen rich one of Tarsus and the _USS Andromeda_ , and now when he was still skin and bones and pain he was being forced into yet another terrible environment. Vulcan is going to be too much like Tarsus, he thinks. He held his breath for as long as he could. Jim knows his oxygen-deprivation boundaries well. _I will survive. I have survived hell, and I now know I am capable of doing it again._ Jim let out a slow breath, schooling his face into the expression he was used to, the neutral, blank one that stared at him in his nightmares.

T’Lanna and Savek picked up their new charge in the shuttle port. He was cold and collected, but he was practically curled around the Vulcan infant that would be taken away from him soon. T’Lanna and Savek had heard of the horrors of Tarsus IV, of course, but seeing the skin and bones of a boy who used to be (from the pictures his mother had shown them) sunshine and smiles and the human embodiment of happiness sent the reality pouring in. If that wasn’t enough, they could see the vertebrae of the baby he was holding through the t-shirt that had been put on the child. Now, Jim had nothing shining in his eyes, like someone flipped a light switch off. T’Lanna realized it was probably something a little more violent, like a light blowing out instead. His face. Savek didn’t know what to do. The boy’s face was blank and his body language didn’t betray his feelings any better. Humans are not supposed to be blank. They are supposed to be alive, to be the embodiment of the emotions that Vulcans bury and pretend they don’t have. The Vulcan’s held their hands up in the ta’al, and Jim returned it, shifting the almost negligible weight of the child onto one arm.

“Will I join a school again soon?” he asked. Only through years of T’Lanna’s schooling and learning emotional control did she manage to keep the slight shock off of her face. Savek’s shock mirrored hers, she could feel it through the bond. T’Lanna could see Jim struggling to keep from shifting uncomfortably, whether out of an attempted display of strength or an attempt to keep the child asleep, she did not know. T’Lanna idly wondered, if Tarsus IV didn’t break Jim, would living on Vulcan do it?

“As soon as you’d like,” Savek tells him.

“As soon as possible. I’m tired of sitting around,” he tells them. T’Lanna knows that if she were a human, or if a human were there, they would have been able to read what the boy wasn’t saying. But they are not, and he is closed off. Even though she is a Vulcan, T’Lanna can see the rage and pain flashing like solar flares coming flaring through the blankness in the human’s bright blue eyes. To the Vulcan’s, it looks almost feral.

“I’m tired.” The tiniest flinch of facial muscles says that Jim is gauging their reaction to his declaration. Jim keeps a tight hold on the child.

“Very well,” Savek says. “We will take you and the child to the healer tomorrow.” He turns to leave. Something flashes in Jim’s eyes, but T’Lanna can’t identify it. If she were to follow what humans called a ‘gut feeling’ she would assume Savek just made himself a figure for Jim to hate. The walk back to their dwelling is short, but Jim seems exhausted by the time they get there. T’Lanna walks up their familiar stairs to the guest bedroom.

        “This will be your room,” she says. “Do you require anything else?” She wants to ask if the child needs anything, but Jim responds before she can.

        “No, thank you,” Jim says without looking up from gently laying the child on the bed and removing the child’s shoes. T’Lanna has a brief moment of wondering if breaking the parental bond between the two is a mistake. T’Lanna pushes that aside. Jim is a child himself. He cannot care for one. Even through Jim’s loose shirt, T’Lanna can see the bones of his spine and shoulder blades as he bends over to take off his own shoes. She thinks that Jim and the baby should eat but decides against mentioning it since he already told her that they did not require anything. T’Lanna quietly exits the room and walks down the stairs to sit quietly next to Savek.

        “Are we doing more damage to an already mentally fragile child by honoring Winona Kirk’s wishes and keeping him here? We hardly know him, and we do not know how to be parents,” T’Lanna asks. Savek reaches out his pointer and middle fingers for hers. She responds in the same.

        “I do not know, T’Lanna.” 

        She looks back out the window and over the sands of Vulcan. They are both studiously avoiding the question of whether or not breaking Jim and T’Raia’s bond will do more damage than good. It is not something either of them wish to consider. 

***

        Jim feels sick. He knows full well it’s not because of the havoc Tarsus wracked on his body, but because of what’s happening today. T’Raia stirs in her sleep, curling into Jim. Jim presses his face into the top of the girl’s head, squeezing his eyes shut, and feeling the hot sting of tears forming behind his eyes.

        “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “So sorry. There’s nothing I can do. My god, I’m so sorry.” Jim recognizes the futility of apologizing to a two-year-old, even a Vulcan one. Bond breaking, he imagines, cannot be an easy or painless process. Jim idly wonders what the Vulcan healer will think of his head. The horrors that it contains. Between Frank and Tarsus, he’s built up quite an impressive horror show in his head. He almost hopes it will wreck the Vulcan’s mind enough that they won’t be able to break the bond.  _ Hope- god, what a useless pursuit.  _ He just curls closer to T’Raia and awaits for the inevitability of T’Lanna coming up and telling him it’s time.

***

        Pain. All encompassing, overwhelming, vomit inducing pain.  _ It’s just in your head.  _ He shivers.  _ I know, I know, that’s the goddamn problem: IT’S ALL IN MY HEAD.  _ Something touches Jim’s arm, and he lashes out, rewarded with a hiss of pain. Jim can’t see through the blinding pain, hell, he can’t feel anything but the blinding pain. Well, that’s not true. Jim can feel the rage. The hate burning in him. The jagged, aching, hole on the back of his head where T’Raia used to be. Hate he had only felt towards Kodos and Frank now directed at an entire race. It burned along his nerves, sparked wildfires in his soul, sent blazes running through his lungs, the smoke thickening, choking him until he couldn’t breathe. His vision clears enough that Jim can see three Vulcans in the room. T’Lanna and Savek are not there. T’Raia isn’t there.  _ “He was a silent fury no torment could tame.” _ The words floated through his head. Jack London.  _ London’s right. I should be dead. Broken, empty, numb. But instead I am fire and rage. Not even the torment of Tarsus IV could bury this rage. It will always return.  _ A shiver rolls through him. Fury is better than numbness. It is healthier. Or at least, that’s what everyone tells him. He’s not sure the red tightness he’s feeling now is healthy. Jim’s only vaguely aware of something snapping, and then he’s falling. He recognizes the crack that makes it through the static in his ears as the sound bone makes when it hits stone. The pain tells Jim the crack was somewhere on his head. He hopes it’s enough to kill him.

***

        Jim wakes up at the hospital later. It wasn’t enough to kill him. Jim thinks he’s disappointed, but he can’t tell. It’s too numb. Everything is too numb. A doctor, he assumes, is talking to him. Jim can’t hear him anyway, so he closes his eyes again.

***

        Jim walks back into the house he’d been living with his mother’s friends for close to seven months now, his entire body shivering with the emotion he wasn’t allowed to let out. As usual, the children at the Vulcan school had mocked and ridiculed him, and he had just watched them try to get under his skin. Jim had to admit that there was some satisfaction in watching them try and fail but this time had been different. They had mentioned how skinny he was which he had to admit, was true. Jim could still count most of his ribs, still had dips in his chest underneath his collar bones, the scars on the left side stretched out across the skin, his knees and elbows were just a little bit too pointy. Jim did, however, look better than he did when he first got off that transport almost seven months ago. The one thing Jim had decided he liked about living with the Vulcans, that was preferential to Iowa, is that they never ask how much food he’s eaten or tell him he needs to eat more. He simply eats what he eats andthe Vulcans accept it. His body shivered in spite of the heat outside the dwelling, and he stalked upstairs to his room. As Jim dropped his PADD on the desk, the screen woke up, displaying the time and date and his entire body froze as he saw the date. January 4th, 2247. Suddenly, the floor was fracturing like a kaleidoscope around him. There was a steel band around his chest getting and tighter and tighter, and someone had lit a road flare in his lungs. Jim is 14. Another year older. A year older than any of the 4,000 colonists he’d dug graves for. Sam. Sam would never be older than seventeen. Another George Kirk carbon copy, the only person who understood what Frank did, and what Tarsus IV was. Reminding Jim of how he failed. 

        The desk swam up, and he vaguely registered a crack. The window was melting into the ceiling, the shades of blues from the sky mixing into the beiges of the room like watercolor with too much water on it. And it kept getting brighter. Jim idly wonders if Vulcan’s sun is supposed to move closer. It would explain why it’s getting brighter. Jim’s head is pounding, the light seems to be screaming, growing brighter and brighter until he couldn’t tell if it was dark or light. The light finally stopped screaming, though.

        It only took moments for Jim to realize two things: one, it was the screaming pain in his head that brought him to consciousness and two, his head was, in fact, laying in the middle of a pool of blood like a grizzly halo. A halo. Jim scoffed. A halo, even one made of blood, is the last thing he deserves. He rubs his fingers over the blood and brings them closer to his face, rubbing them together. It smells sharp and tangy, like iron. It’s still wet, Jim’s fingers slide against one another easily. That’s when he realizes he must get up. He needs to get to the kitchen, and then the to bathroom. But slowly, because as much as Jim wishes he could rush up and hurry, he doesn’t have time to pass out again. T’Lanna will be home soon. Of course, Jim’s body rejects that idea as soon as he pushes against the ground and sits up. Jim dry heaves between his knees. Once it subsides to the point where he isn’t doubled over trying to puke up his stomach lining, he reaches up, his fingers closing on the cool wood of the desk. The process of pulling himself up is slow. He studies the bloody corner of the desk as his legs shake. For one crazy second, Jim is sure it is someone else’s blood on his desk. That is cannot be his. He focuses once more, and once he’s sure, or mostly sure, that he can stand without immediately ending up on the floor again, he slowly wobbles his way over to the door. It slides open and he’s making his way down the stairs. Jim pauses, breathing through another wave of nausea, and glances back up the stairs only to realize that he left blood on the railing. He spares a moment to feel guilty that he left the mess for T’Lanna and Savek to clean up.

        Once Jim makes it to the bottom of the stairs, it’s four steps to the kitchen, one more to the knife drawer, grabbing the closest, sharpest knife _ , _ and then a slow one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn and back up the stairs. The bathroom drawer makes a click behind Jim, confirming that it locked. Jim spins the knife point on the tip of his pointer finger before he’s leaning against the bathtub and pushing the knife in and ripping his arm open from wrist to elbow, and  _ Oh, god there’s so much blood. But all of my blood won’t wipe out what I’ve seen. Or will it? That’s why I’m doing this, right? I lose enough blood, and I won’t have to see their blood and bodies every time I close my eyes.  _ And then he’s pulling the knife out, and switching hands, ignoring the shaking, the blood making his grip slippery on the smooth handle. Jim could feel his heart speeding up, doing its best to break through his ribs. Given how fragile they still were, he’s surprised that his heart hadn’t succeeded, barring the fact that it was a medical impossibility. The point is pushed in, and then Jim’s slicing open his other arm. He can’t get a good hold on the knife, and the slippery fingers, and black spots in his vision are not helping. Jim wiggles his fingers and watches as more blood slides out along the much more ragged cut. The knife slips out of his fingers. Jim is pretty sure it wasn’t a conscious decision to drop the knife into the pool of blood that’s starting to form in the bottom of the tub. He watches with rapt fascination as blood gushes out with the pounding of his heart. And it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s wonderful, he tells himself. Sam is dead, and Mom doesn’t care, and all Frank wants him for is a punching bag. It’s better if he’s dead, Jim decides. If he could, he would stay here forever, with his head so fuzzy, he can’t remember anything. His name, the date, why he’s kneeling over the tub, or why someone is pounding on the door. Of course, the darkness Jim’s feeling now is nice, too. Yes, quite nice. He can’t feel anything here. He doesn’t have to exists here. It’s perfect.

***

        Amanda Grayson was used to waking up early. After all, she always got up to make her bondmate and her son breakfast. She was not, however, used to waking up at 3am to her comm ringing and being summoned to the hospital. The doctors couldn’t tell her why, just that she was needed, so she went. And that was how she found herself being taken to the pediatrics’ ward at 3:57am by a nurse. A doctor fell in step with her.

        “Lady Grayson. I am Doctor Asil. I am gratified you are here. I am out of my abilities here, I believe,” he tells her. Amanda is still not sure what this has to do with her. “There is one other human in the city, Lady Grayson.”

        “Doctor, the are many other humans here. For both Starfleet, and the VSA,” Amanda tells him.

        “I apologize for not being more precise. There is only one other full-time human resident in ShiKahr.” Amanda nods once. “James Tiberius Kirk. He is fourteen years old, and he attempted suicide early last night. His guardians, T’Lanna and Savek found him before he lost enough blood for it to be fatal.” Amanda nods, then frowns.

        “Why am I here? I’m not his parent or guardian” she tells him.

        “But you are human. T’Lanna and Savek requested any human who is a full-time resident on Vulcan. You were the closest. James is a broken child. Suicide is illogical, and Vulcans have been unable to reach him thus far. You may have more success.” Anger flares through Amanda at his words. While suicide is not the best option, it’s probably Vulcans like him with their flippant shove-it-under-the-rug attitude and derision towards most things human that drove him to suicide anyway.

        “Another thing you should know, he was on Tarsus IV. His brother, aunt, and uncle died on Tarsus IV. He moved to Vulcan per his mother’s request after he was released from the medbay of the starship that he and the other 21 survivors were on.” True rage flares through Amanda at that. How could someone do that to a child? How could a mother abandon a child after he had survived hell? Doctor Asil motions her towards a room.

        “He is in there and awake, most likely. He has not slept since he woke up here,” the doctor tells her. Amanda is entirely unsurprised by that. Instead of expressing that, she simply nods and walks to the door, slowly opening it and stepping into the room. The boy is curled up on the bed, the back of his hospital gown hanging open. Amanda barely manages to stifle a gasp. She can count the boy’s vertebrae with relative ease if she felt like it. They stick out from under his skin like knobs. If she looks closely, she can see a shadow of the boy’s ribs thinly covered with muscle. And that doesn’t begin to cover the horror of the scars on his back. They are disturbing shades of white and blue, stretching across his skin like a twisted, sick version of lace. Amanda fights down the urge to throw up as her brain supplies ideas about what put those scars there.

        “James?” she asks. The muscles jump under his tan skin. Amanda makes her way around the bed. As soon as she’s in his line of sight, the boy’s eyes attach to her and follow her as she pulls a chair closer to the bed. The only light is the light provided by the city on the other side of the window, and the boy’s eyes flash in the city lights. They’re a dark blue, like when the day slowly slips away into the night. Amanda is sure that during the day, they’d be captivating.

        “I’m Lady Amanda Grayson,” Amanda introduces herself. James frowns.

        “You’re human.” Amanda knows it’s meant to be a statement, but the inflection at the end makes it sound like a question. Her heart breaks for the boy curled up on the biobed in front of her. All she can think about looking at him is that he’s someone’s baby and that someone dumped their little boy off on a planet that disdains all human methods of grieving.

        “I am,” Amanda chooses to say, hoping that being bonded to a Vulcan has paid off and that none of her previous train of thought has shown up on her face.

        “Why the hell would you choose to live in this god forsaken place?” Amanda is a little bit more than taken aback at James’ words. She tilts her head and raises her eyebrows.

        “My husband and son are here,” she says slowly. James closes his eyes. His nostrils flare. He opens them again.

        “So, they sent you because, and I think their exact words were that they ‘are insufficient to meet the needs of the psychologically inferior child’. So, what, are you a psychologist? Counselor? What do they want me to tell you?”  James practically spits the words at her.

        “They did send me because they did not know how to help you,” she tells him. Jim’s mouth twists in disgust.

        “They could’ve helped me by letting me die,” the boy practically growls out. Amanda takes a deep breath, and studies him for a minute. Anyone with half a mind, or maybe anyone who wasn’t a Vulcan, could see that this tough face James was putting forward was a shield, if a very good one. Amanda’s years as a teacher had taught her how to read kids, how to figure out what they weren’t saying. 

        Now, if James really meant that comment about letting him die was another matter, but the block of ice now sitting in Amanda’s stomach and the city lights glinting off the boy’s blue eyes, the only light in them, Amanda realizes, were running together and telling Amanda that Jim wasn’t kidding. And they way his eyes looked so horribly blank, interspersed with brief flashes of anger or pain, the way the very corners of his mouth twitched, the way his body shivered despite the fact that the hospital was slightly warm, and the fact that Jim refused to pull up the blanket on the bed even though he appeared cold, those all culminated in one, massive cry for help if Amanda had ever heard one.

        “James, do you know what supernovas are?”

        “Stars collapsing inwards and then exploding. I’m not too sure about the exact science, though. I haven’t had the chance to read about it yet,” Jim tells her. Amanda nods.

        “Stars go supernova at the end of their lives. When the star runs out of nuclear fuel, its mass starts flowing into the core. After a while, the core gets so heavy it can’t stand its gravitational force. That causes the star to collapse, which results in the giant explosion of a supernova. Do you know why I’m telling you this?” Jim shakes his head. “I know you were on Tarsus IV.” At that, Jim freezes, every muscle in his body locking into place. “I’m not going to pretend to know what happened over there. I can only begin to imagine its horror. But all of that pain and anger and hurt and guilt that you’ve been burying?” Amanda stops. Tears have gathered in the boy’s eyes, and his hands tighten on top of the sheets.  “All of that is your mass running into your core. And it got too heavy. My darling boy, you are a star, and you just went supernova.”


	2. The Theory of Lines in the Sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More depressing stuff.  
> Here's chapter two though!  
> Comments and kudos make my week!  
> Should i keep working on this? Is there actually interest?  
> I believe all the trigger warnings from the last chapter apply.  
> Also on a side note: The ocean is NOT a good place to learn to swim. Please learn in a safer controlled environment.  
> as always, come yell at me at: ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly@gmail.com with any questions or just to talk or yell

            James couldn’t stomach the food Amanda had given him. Not when sitting next to a Vulcan boy a couple of years older than him and across from that Vulcan’s father. Both were harsh looking, severe. Jim kept his back straight, expression blank, but he was pretty sure the Vulcan’s could feel the anxiety rolling off of him, never mind that they were touch telepaths, not ‘I’m-sitting-right-next-to-someone-on-the-verve-of-breaking-down’ telepaths.

            “Where were you born?” Jim almost flinches as Sarek speaks. James knows that Sarek is asking for a town and planet and country, and he could, he should tell him _I’m from Riverside. It’s a city in the state of Iowa, on Earth,_ but he can’t because it feels implicitly wrong, like he would be telling a lie saying it. Jim wasn’t made there, not really. Almost everything that makes him special or different now comes from Tarsus. The evil darkness in Jim feels, the slowly healing wounds on his arms, everything that makes him different from everyone else was forged in the hellish fires of Tarsus IV. The rest comes from being George Kirk’s son, and Jim is most definitively not telling these Vulcans that his last name isn’t actually Wellcott.

            “Earth,” Jim decides, because anything else feels wrong, and because Amanda is now frowning at him with something that he thinks might be worry, and so he feels compelled to answer. Jim can feel Amanda’s frown shift. It’s disappointment he knows. Of course, she’s disappointed, James tells himself. Dinner is silent after that, and when it’s over he escapes to the room Amanda and Sarek had given him. Jim walks across the floor and presses his head against the glass window. His body shivers, still reeling from blood loss and trying to recover from the trauma of Tarsus, compounded by him ripping his radial artery open from wrist to elbow. For the first time since Jim left Tarsus, he allows himself to think. It’s a terrible idea, he knows, to let his mind wander back to that place of fire and filth _._ But he can’t stop. He’s not sure he wants to. So Jim remembers Kodos. What Jim asked him to do. What he let Kodos do to him. Another shiver rips through Jim’s body, but this time it is of revulsion.

            “I really should have died in that hospital,” he whispers to the blank expression starring back at him from the reflection in the glass. Jim doesn’t recognize this person anymore. He doesn’t think Sam or his mother would either. Of course, he acknowledges, his mother has never seen him, she has always seen George Kirk. Jim’s cheeks are still hollow, he can still see the dips underneath where his collar bone is trying to poke out of his skin when he changes. It’s ironic he decides, that Frank did everything he could and yet it wasn’t until the horrors of Tarsus IV that James was worn down into the empty skeleton Frank always wanted him to be.

Jim recognizes that his face is wet before he recognizes he was even crying. One of many things that Tarsus taught him; cry silently. Do not let the world know you are weak. “You are not made of glass. The world kills the weak and shatters glass,” Jim growls at himself.   

***

            Spock wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about the new human living in his house. On one hand, the boy was eerily similar to Vulcans: private, silent and, so far as Spock could discern, emotionless. On the other hand, he felt the pull towards him, one that he could not explain. If he allowed himself to dwell on the topic, something he studiously attempted to avoid, he supposed it was because he was a counter point to his mother. His very human mother is the epitome of warmth and comfort and home and was so opposite from James who was cold as ice, and as dangerous as a phaser set to kill, and a complete stranger. James was a fascinating study, the only other example of his human heritage besides his mother, and a complete counter point to her. He really hadn’t expected to find James out in the desert, his robes thrown over some nearby rocks, leaving the human in nothing but a long sleeved black shirt and black boxers. He watched as he threw another rock at the lake, and it skipped across the surface. He took a step forward without looking, and rocks scattered from under his foot. The boy’s entire body tensed as he turned, eyes immediately finding Spock. James relaxed a little, turning his attention back to the rapidly dissipating ripples.

            “Why are you doing that?” Spock asks Jim. He raises an eyebrow as Spock comes closer.

            “Why not?” Jim says, taking the rock in his hand and skipping it in a similar manner.

            “It serves no purpose,” Spock states.

            “Well, I serve no purpose either, and yet here I am.” Revulsion leaks through into the boy’s voice. For the first time since James moved into Spock’s home he realized why he had moved in: he was hurt, deeply, and the Vulcans must have realized his mother was the only one truly capable of helping the boy. Of course, he supposes, that James must want the help offered to him first. Spock is not entirely certain he wants help.

            “Why are you here?” Jim asks after skipping the last rock in his hand.

            “I enjoy the solitude provided by being this far from the city. Why are you here? Is it solely for the purpose of employing physics and the correct shape of rocks to achieve a skipping pattern across the surface of this lake?” Spock asks. James gives him a look he can’t quite decipher, his blue eyes flashing like a muzzle flare in the Vulcan sun.

            “I also enjoy solitude.” James turns and walks over to his robes, and Spock notices for the first time the he’s not wearing shoes, either. He can still see James’ spine through his black shirt when he bends over.

            “I know you were on Tarsus IV.” Spock regrets the words as soon as they are out of his mouth, as illogical as that may be, but as Spock watches the instantaneous shift in James’ demeanor, the muscles in his back bunching and tightening under the black shirt as he snaps into an upright position, he thinks that perhaps the regret is logical given James reaction. For the first time, Spock believes this human quite capable of inflicting significant damage on his person. Muted fury flashes in James’ eyes as he spins around, and Spock’s previous notion of James’ ability to inflict harm on his person is suddenly magnified and Spock has the curious sensation of feeling that he is trapped with a wild le-matya. A wild animal intent on killing him.

            “You’re going to learn something today, Spock,” Jim growls. Spock takes a few steps back as Jim stalks towards him until Spock’s back hits the rock behind him. It takes almost all of Spock’s control to not flinch when Jim reaches around him. He can smell Jim, and it infatuates him. Spock’s hypothesis that he is falling in some version of love with the most emotionally compromised beings on Vulcan appears to be true, albeit, incredibly inconvenient when, physically, James is right here in front of Spock, and yet thousands of light years out of reach. If Spock believed in using metaphors and illogical comparisons, he would say that Jim was at the opposite side of a black hole; unknowable and entirely unreachable. Jim smells of sweet cut grass, and petrichor, and something intrinsically Jim that Spock is sure he could pick out of a crowd. He irrationally misses it when Jim steps back, and it takes him point three four seconds longer than it normally should have to observe that Jim is holding a stick.

“This is a stick,” Jim says, slowly, as if Jim believes that Spock is incapable of comprehending the simple statement the requires simple observation to confirm. It takes half a second, and then Spock senses the mocking in Jim’s tone. Jim takes a few steps back and puts the stick in the sand in front of him, and proceeds to draw, a sharp, quick line. “And today I’m going to teach you the theory of lines in the sand,” Jim says.

            “I am not sure I see the logic in this theory,” Spock tells him, tilting his head. Jim purses his lips, frowning. When he speaks, it is not what Spock expects him to say.  

            “If you want me to not stick this stick up your ass, then it’ll be a theory just as important as any of the theories we learn in school.” Jim waves the point of the stick in his direction, as if to punctuate his statement. Spock has a general sense of foreboding that Jim is going to be just as unpredictable and illogical as his mother, if not more so. “This theory, which we’ll abbreviate to TOLITS, so we don’t have to say it every time, is quite simple, actually,” Jim says, breaking Spock out of his reverie. “You have your line in the sand, and I have mine. So, whatever I write on my side of the sand, is stuff you’re not allowed to ask about. And stuff you write on your side of the line is stuff I’m not allowed to ask about.” Jim breaks eye contact to look down and, using the stick, starts writing in the sand. Spock watches, infinitely more intrigued with Jim, as he writes in the sand. The words: Kodos, Tarsus IV, my family, my past, my nightmares appeared in the sand in shaky Vulcan, and then Jim straightens up, flipping the stick to hand it to Spock. This had the statistical probability of being the strangest theory Spock had ever heard, but it was also quite logical. It outlined subjects the participants of the relationship were not comfortable talking about. With this available to him, it would help ensure Spock didn’t accidentally offend Jim or take the conversations they may have into territories that would offend Jim or create strain on their relationship. Of course, now that Jim had put those topics off limits, Spock needed sate his curiosity and learn, ask, more about them. Spock accepted the stick from Jim and paused with the stick before writing: the relationships with my class mates, my parents in the sand.

            “Is that satisfactory?” He asks Jim, looking for his approval. Jim stares at the sand, the Vulcan script curling through it, as if it is some new puzzle that has been presented to him.

            “Yes.” a shudder runs through Jim’s body and then he’s spinning on his heel and stalking over towards his robes.

            “I am… curious, about a viewpoint you may hold,” Spock tells Jim, realizing that this is actually something he desires to know about Jim, given his interaction with some of the true horrors humanity is capable. Jim will hold a viewpoint dictated by information that most lack.

            “What is it?” Jim asks, pulling the belt tight around his waist. Spock notes that, even though the belt is on the tightest clip, it’s still too loose around Jim’s waist. He pulls himself out of the musings, and focuses on his question.

            “Vulcans and humans have very different reactions to emotions. Do you find one method more appealing compared to another?” Jim sighs as he sits on the sand, pulling his boots back on. There’s something spinning in his cerulean blue eyes that makes Spock’s teeth set on edge.

            “Yes and no,” Jim says, patting the sand next to him. Spock walks over and sits next to Jim. The water is as smooth as glass now that Jim is no longer throwing rocks at it. The desert wind that comes in the afternoon has not picked up yet. “I wish on a regular basis that I could bury my emotions as deeply as you Vulcans do, that I could rule them with logic and knowledge.” Jim pauses, rubbing some grains of sand between his fingertips. Spock has noticed that James is hardly ever still. James takes a deep breath and pauses before starting again. “Humans and Vulcans are species both born out of chaos and violence and blood. Our species, obviously, evolved on completely different tracks. Humans continued our bloody rampage for far longer than Vulcans did. It got us things like the World Wars and the Romulan wars. You guys got Surak. There are days where I would kill, possibly quite literally, if it meant I could go through your Kolinahr and purge my emotions. All of this…” Spock watches as the muscle in Jim’s jaw clenches and jump under the skin. “Oh, I don’t know. You can’t have the highs without the lows, you know? I guess our species are just following whatever our genetic codes dictate. We can’t really be at fault for that, can we?” The smile Jim offers him shouldn’t be considered a smile, Spock believes. After all, aren’t human smiles supposed to emanate joy? All this one emanates is pain. Spock simply nods once.

***

            “I have a question for you.” Spock startles at James’s voice but tilts his head towards the human.

            “Teach me to fight.” Jim’s voice is hard, and something flashes in his blue eyes like a light bulb when it blows out. Spock wasn’t sure what it was about Jim’s decidedly human attitude that drew Spock towards him, like a moon being pulled into orbit, but somehow Jim had drawn Spock in. At least, drawn him in as far as Jim was willing. Spock, in the grand scheme of things he could know about a person, knows very little about James Wellcott, but one of the things he does know is that the human is the master of pushing and pulling at relationships, shaping, and molding them into whatever shape he feels comfortable with, the same way a master potter throws and shapes clay. All these thoughts, Spock decides, will be focused on during his meditation tonight.

            “Why?” He asks Jim. He watches Jim move as he stalks over to him. There’s a precision to Jim’s movements that several parts of his anatomy react to. On one hand, it makes him want to throw Jim on the ground, wrestle with him in the sand, and then have intercourse with Jim. On the other hand, it makes Spock’s heart stutter in his side because Jim is beautiful _._ James is all controlled power and grace and that deep, burning intelligence that Spock has only recently gotten a taste of in their recent conversations.

            “Because,” Jim says when he gets closer. Spock is hit with her scent of sweet cut grass, and petrichor again. Jim’s head tilts as he studies him. “Would it help if I said please?” Jim finally asks him. Spock shakes his head minutely. Illogically, he would give anything and everything he could to this shattered human.

            “Very well. I shall teach you,” Spock concedes. The little smile, the first smile he’s ever seen from Jim that wasn’t all pain, makes it worth it. Of course, the next second Jim’s foot is planted behind Spock’s and he’s falling backwards, and Jim’s pinning him in the Vulcan sand, and distinctly un-Vulcan thoughts are running through Spock’s head. For a still significantly under-weight human, James is incredibly strong. Spock feels his heart palpitate when he feels Jim’s breath on his ear.

            “Like that?” Jim murmurs. He uses his arm that Jim is not holding up between his shoulder blades to grab Jim and practically throw him off of himself. To Spock’s surprise, and a note to skills Jim must already possess, he lands mostly on his feet.

            “Not quite,” and Spock realizes only after he’s said it that he’s teasing Jim. Jim smirks.

            “So, teach me, satyr.” Jim teases back. He raises an eyebrow as they start circling.

            “Satyr? Explain?” Spock demands. Jim’s face simply contorts into the smirk he throws at everyone.

            “Catch me if you can, and I’ll tell you.” Jim’s eyes flash again, and Spock is about to inform him about how illogical this is, but Jim is already 3.7 yards away, scrambling over the rocks and out of the canyon-like geological formation that the lake is in. Spock bolts after him, stretching out as soon as he climbs over the edge of the canyon and Spock feels a thrill run through him at running for the sake of running that he will never admit to having. He must admit, James is fast. For a human. Spock gently grabs his waist and tackles him, rolling several times across the desert floor before coming to a stop on his stomach. James is on his back, grinning up at the blue of the Vulcan sky. He’s hit again with how beautiful Jim is.

            “A satyr is a Greek mythological creature identified by its goat legs and pointed ears,” Jim says. He turns his head to look pointedly at Spock’s pointed ears. “Satyr, in this manner, is being used as a nickname highlighting the Vulcan biology of your ears.” She turns to look back at the sky. Spock feels an almost smile grace his face, he’s never had a nickname before, but he says nothing.

***

            Spock awakens to repeated, borderline desperate, knocking on his door. He gets up, readjusting his sleep robe as he walks over and opens the door. James has his fingers twisted in Spock’s robe and is pulling him out the door before he can say anything. James pauses to let him put on his shoes, Spock notes that Jim does not put on shoes, and then James is pulling him out the door and jogging through the city, expecting Spock to follow him. He does.

            “James, what is wrong?” He asks. Jim doesn’t look at him, just keeps up his easy run. Once they’re in the desert, Jim starts sprinting.

            “James, stop,” Spock says. If Jim hears him, he doesn’t listen and then Spock’s following him out into the desert. Spock does admit to himself, in the privacy of his own mind, that the desert at night is a sight to admire. The reds and golds of the rock and the sand turn to black, and the moon shines silver over it. He catches up when James stops, spinning to look at him. His eyes reflect the silver light of the moon. It’s almost creepy, the silvery color the blue turns in the moonlight. He tilts his head, the golden hair flopping onto his forehead and turning silver in the darkness of the sky. Jim slowly sinks to sit on the desert floor, his feet tucked under him. The sand is cool when Spock mimics his movements.

            “Do you believe in the devil?” Jim asks.

            “No.” Spock answers as he tilts his head, trying to read the boy’s face. Jim closes his eyes and a tear rolls down his cheek. Spock realizes he has never seen Jim look so vulnerable. He’s about to reach for Jim, to wipe away the trace of his pain Spock is so unaccustomed to seeing, when Jim takes a sharp breath in.

            “Then how do you account for the murder of 7,978 people? I watched them shoot children, Spock. Babies. God, the sound of those guns will never get out of my head,” he hisses. It hits Spock like a punch in the gut. Jim is talking about Tarsus IV. He experiences what humans termed ‘heart palpitations’. “And then they sent me here. So far away from them. I have family on Earth, you know. Why my mother made T’Lanna and Savek my guardians I will never understand. And if I had been sent to Iowa, I would have at least been looking at the same stars as the others. As my kids. As Koreva. Here, these are foreign.” Spock recognizes that Jim’s not making an overwhelming amount of sense, but Spock gets the distinct notion they younger boy doesn’t care, and that maybe it makes sense to him.

            “I…” Spock pauses, trying to find the correct words. “I think there are some people who turn to drastic measures under extreme duress.” The look in Jim’s eyes tells him those were definitely the wrong words, and Spock’s suddenly vivid imagination conjures up all the horrible things Jim would have learned in his fight to keep him and the eight children he has referenced, alive.

            “Drastic measures? That’s what you call that?” Jim lets out a few other words that he assumes is Jim swearing in some language Spock doesn’t know.

            “To whom are you referring?” Spock asks quietly, avoiding the question that he does not have answers to. Jim sighs quietly.

            “The other eight kids who I survived Tarsus IV with. You would have liked Kevin. Smart kid, logical. Well, as logical as you can be at six years old in that hell,” he whispers.

            “Tell me about the others?” Spock asks. Jim tilts his head back, closing his eyes, making his eyelashes fan out across her cheekbones. _I am in love with you. You do not have to fight alone, t’hy’la._ The thoughts floats across Spock’s head unbidden. Spock had not thought of the borderline overwhelming emotional response James evoked in him for some time. But, watching him fight this war in his head, alone, he’s not sure he can deny it.

            James slowly opens his eyes to look at the stars above Vulcan again.

            “I believe that will be a story for another time,” Jim says slowly, but Spock doesn’t miss the way Jim’s finger draws a line in the sand. A subtle warning, he assumes. Watching Jim stare up at the stars, with lines far too deep for a 14-year-old etched on his face, he realizes what humans meant when they claimed that there was beauty in pain, illogical as it may have seemed at the time. Jim’s eyelashes are fanning out over her high cheek bones again. Jim has gained some weight, he notices as he watches the skin tight black fabric move over Jim’s stomach as he breathes.

            “I suppose maybe you’re right,” Jim muses. Spock tilts his head.

            “Clarify?” he asks. Although that word alone would sound rude to anyone else, they’ve gotten so comfortable with each other that it simply shows their… friendship, Spock decides, but his need to resort to Standard to define Spock and Jim’s relationship is something Spock would prefer not to examine too closely.

            “About the Devil. After all, there’s so much evil manifested in acts across the galaxy, how on earth could there be any left for him? We create evil just fine by ourselves. All the really creative evils are of our own doing.”

***

            Spock couldn’t keep the tiny smile off of his face as James drops his feet back to the ground, standing up again and completing what he had referred to as a ‘handstand’. He mimicked it, and felt sparks shoot through him at Jim’s nod of approval.

            “I don’t believe in no-win scenarios,” Jim blurts. Spock feels his mind reel. In what way does that connect to old Terran forms of amusement? Jim nods when he sees Spock’s confusion.

            “My home life in Iowa was shitty. Like, Vulcans-can’t-comprehend-the-illogic shitty. It was the same when I moved to Tarsus IV even before the famine and that shit fest.” Jim sighs. “It was an exercise I practiced. ‘You don’t believe in no win scenarios, Jim. What can you learn from it?’ and then I’d run through anything and everything I could possibly learn from it, no matter how terrible the thing was.” Jim shrugs. “Well, I’m having a hard time believing that there was anything about Tarsus that was winning in any manner,” Jim eventually says. He nods.

            “Do you think time will help?” Spock asks. He had heard the Terran phrase ‘time heals all wounds’ several times from his mother. This time, he wasn’t sure it would help.

            “I do not know,” Jim says.

            “Do you still believe in no no-win scenarios?” Spock asks. Jim frowns at the ground, running his fingers through the red sand.

            “I don’t know,” Jim says very quietly. It’s only Spock’s superior hearing that allows him to hear it. He’s sure a human wouldn’t have caught it. “Let’s try a cartwheel now.” Jim stands up, leaving Spock with little choice but to follow.

            “Yes,” Spock responds anyway.

***

            James wasn’t entirely sure when, over the course of their relationship, he had fallen in love with Spock. But it had happened, and he couldn’t deny it. But he could mask it with everything else, and right now his anger at Spock was topping that list.

            “I’m just saying don’t limit your options!” Jim shouts, his control finally breaking. Jim sees anger flash in Spock’s eyes.

            “Why not? The VSA is the most prestigious of all schools. I would be honored to be accepted.” Jim clenches his jaw hard enough he feels a headache forming.

            “Seriously, Spock? Is this out of some twisted way to win the war you have going on inside you? Your belief that your human and Vulcan sides are split straight down the middle?” Jim snaps. Spock visibly stiffens, and Jim knows he’s hit pretty close to the mark. “Trust me, just because you sign up for the VSA it isn’t going to magically heal this split you feel. That’s something you have to do yourself.” Jim’s voice is softer this time when he tells him this. Jim watches the gears in his head turn as Spock stares at him. Something then flashes in Spock’s eyes, and Jim shifts to defend himself. There’s no way this is going to end well.

            “And you are one who knows about internal conflict, I presume?” Jim can hear the derision in Spock’s voice, and he feels his lip curl at the blatant emotion in the Vulcan’s voice.

            “Mark my words, Satyr,” Jim almost feels satisfaction when Spock flinches at his nickname, “One day, you’ll wish you had anything but the VSA waiting for you.”

            “I believe I am to understand that somehow you have come to understand circumstances which one backs one’s self into in a situation and then regrets it, causing some sort of schism inside one’s self?” James feels his skin crawl just thinking about it.

            “Yes, I do.” Spock tilts his head at the human.

            “Elaborate,” Spock’s voice is hard.

            “You’re asking about something on my side of the line in the sand,” Jim warns. Spock steps closer.

            “Unless presented with factual data and confirmation about this, I cannot believe that you have knowledge that is sound enough to be considered in my decision.” James is close enough to smell Spock. Sharp and dry like the desert and slightly spicy like the Vulcan tea that Amanda makes for them.

            “I allied myself with another child on Tarsus IV. Her name was Koreva. Between her and I, we kept seven children alive and out of Kodos’ reach. In the end, I ended up sacrificing my brother trying to keep those children alive, and I knew it before it happened. And every waking second, I wish I could have changed something. Every second, I wish I hadn’t backed myself into that corner. Every second I wish I wasn’t such a goddamn bleeding heart, thinking I could save everyone,” Jim ends his tirade without having raised his voice. It had remained cold and emotionless the entire time. Spock straightens again, looking straight down at him. Jim’s mind flashed to the bit about Kodos he was leaving out. _No,_ he chastised herself, _that is something that I cannot talk about. I went to_ him, _after all. It is a shame I will take to my grave._

            “Why do you continue to dwell on Tarsus IV? Wishing to change the past is illogical. It has already happened, there is nothing you can do.” James feels his spine tighten at Spock’s words. He searches Spock’s face for any sign of true confusion, but it takes half a heartbeat for Jim to realize Spock said it to intentionally cause Jim pain. Jim recognizes the fire in his eyes before Spock does. Perhaps that’s why Jim somehow manages to move faster than Spock, he’s not sure, but suddenly Spock’s curled over holding his nose while green blood oozes through his fingers. Fire burns low in his stomach. Jim recognizes that he should feel guilty for hurting Spock, and he’s sure he will later, but he can’t right now, not when it feels like someone has ripped Jim’s lungs straight out of his chest.

            “Your just as bad as them. No, you’re not though, are you? You said that with the implicit goal being to inflict pain. You enjoyed that, didn’t you? You’re nothing like them. You’re just as twisted as us lowly humans.” Jim doesn’t wait for Spock to look up or respond to the words he had said to cover the hurt, he simply turns on his heel and heads back towards the house.

***

            “Hanukah?” James asks as he pauses in the doorway to the living room. Amanda looks over her shoulder and smiles.

            “Yes. Did you practice any religion or Christmas?” James slowly walks over to kneel next to Amanda in front of the menorah.

            “Technically, we were Jewish, but my mom was never home, and my uncle wasn’t big on Christmas or Hanukah.” Amanda slowly nods.

            “We stopped, well I suppose it was really all me, but I stopped doing anything for Spock when he was six. He asked me to stop, said there was no logic to it. Sarek had put up with it, but he never really approved,” Amanda offers a smile and it hits inside James.

            “Spock’s made you cry before,” Jim says. Amanda’s smile doesn’t waver, just gets a little sadder.

            “I was prepared for what I was signing up for when I bonded with Sarek. I also prepared myself when I found out that I was pregnant that it would be hard.” James nods. He and Amanda sit and watch the light fade to darkness.

            “Jim?” He looks up at Amanda’s voice; she’s frowning.

            “I know your brother died on Tarsus, but who else did you lose?” She asks quietly. James almost laughs. Almost.

            “I lost a lot of people, but ironically it was the ones I lost when the Federation arrived that hurt the most,” Jim says. Amanda tilts her head. It’s the same thing Spock does when he’s confused. Since James had punched Spock a few days ago, they had made a point to avoid each other and it was slowly becoming another chasm of pain in his mind.

            “What do you mean?” Amanda asks. James sighs, his hands tightening on his thighs. He’s not really sure why he told her that, Jim doesn’t want to talk about it, especially with someone who seems to care. That’s a foreign sensation to him. Jim almost flinches when a hand lands on his. Jim slowly looks down to where Amanda has set her hand on James’.

            “I survived with some others. Of course, the trauma that only the little group of us understood…” The words spill out uninvited. He trails off as their faces run through his head. He keeps stopping on black eyes though. Thomas. Kevin. T’Raia. Elias. Darcy. Rachel. Charlette. Koreva. _And me. I am lost without them._ “Well, they all went to family on Earth. I came to two people I barely knew on a planet that distains my species way of grieving,” Jim blurts, unable to say anything else, and yet feeling like he needed to say something. Amanda tightens her hand on Jim’s.

            “Do you want to light the first candle?” Amanda eventually asks. Jim nods, and lets Amanda teach him how, describing the traditions, how it evolved through time, how her family celebrated it. The Festival of Lights, Amanda called it. It fit, James thought, that somehow, in the crashing sea of darkness that he lived in, he stumbled into the one house on the entire planet of Vulcan that had a member who practiced a festival celebrating light. There was something calming and right about sitting with Amanda and watching the candle slowly drip wax. For the first time, one of the chasms in Jim’s head was filling with something other than pain, even if he couldn’t quite decipher what that something was yet.

***

            James had never been more thankful for water than he was now, floating on his back in the small but immeasurably deep lake that he had discovered months ago on his first foray into Vulcan’s desert. It was so still, except for the ripple from his gentle floating. The sun was a wonderful contrast to the surprisingly cool water. And of course, the sound of water in his ears was a comfort. It reminded him of one of the few times his mother had cared. Winona had taken Jim and Sam to San Francisco. It had been a trial-by-fire way of leaning to swim, jumping straight into the Pacific. Jim had gotten better when he started swimming in the pond that sat on the edge of the farm’s property line. That house in Iowa had been a prison, choking the life out of him. The left over books from his father and the library had been his refuge. It was where Jim first decided he wanted to be a trauma surgeon after memorizing an anatomy and two medical text books. After seeing so many people die, so many bodies taken apart, he wasn’t so sure he could put one back together. He wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to.

A few more moments of this peaceful sanity, and a deep burning desire to avoid the conversation he and Spock were about to have were what kept him from immediately swimming back to shore when he heard Spock calling for him. Jim let Spock call twice more before he rolled over, practically lazy in his movements, and swam back to shore. Spock watched Jim walk over, water splashing around his legs as he slogged out of the water, before Jim finally reached Spock, at the edge of the water.

            “You called,” Jim tells Spock. He gets one slanted eyebrow raised towards that bowl cut Jim has developed more affection for than he’d like to admit.  

            “Although apologies are illogical, you were correct in your statement. I did say what I said for the purpose of causing you pain, pain which I regretted causing almost before I was done inflicting it. I wish to rectify that in whatever manner I can,” Spock says. Jim tilts his head and raises his eyebrows, studying Spock. Spock’s eyes had never wandered from Jim’s even though Jim had acquired a plethora of scars across his chest and back. The ones on his arms though, usually drew the attention of even the most self-controlled Vulcans. Spock looks nervous, Jim realizes. Or, as nervous as Vulcans ever look.

            “I won’t change my opinion of your decision. I think it’s stupid and ridiculously closed minded for such a smart Vulcan, but if you want you can add it to your side of the line in the sand,” Jim says. Spock nods slowly.

            “I wish to also add what you brought up during that incident to your side of the line. I do not wish to cause you anymore pain,” Spock tells Jim. Jim can’t help the small, very pleased smile that breaks on his face, but he does manage to tamp it down to a small one.  

            “Yeah, that’s fine,” Jim says. “Let’s just call that The Incident, accept the new lines in the sand, and move on, yeah?” He asks Spock. Spock nods.

            “You were swimming,” he notes. Jim nods.

            “I was. I used to do it on Earth a lot once I learned. I found and what was probably closer to a mud puddle than a lake, but I swam in it anyway. Do you know how to swim?” Jim tilts his head at him.

            “I do not know how,” Spock states.

            “Well, do you want me to teach you?” Jim asks, but Spock decides it sounds like Jim is telling Spock that Jim is going to teach him regardless. Jim almost smirks when excitement sparks in Spock’s eyes, yet another emotion Spock will never admit to. Spock nods once, acknowledging that Jim technically asked a question.

“Well, you’re going to have to take your clothes off first,” Jim says, grinning and gesturing to himself wearing a just his black boxers, and then sweeping his arm over to where his robes had been throw haphazardly across the rocks.

            “Was that a human flirtation?” Spock asks. Jim feels her face flush red, it was blatant flirting, but Jim’s heart responds before his mind can catch up.

            “If you want it to be.” Jim winks at him. “Seriously though, I could swim in robes and everything but that’s because I know how to swim pretty well. You’d drown in those.” Jim watches as Spock reaches up and undoes the clasps for his robe. As Spock pulls them off, James is suddenly very grateful he asked to teach Spock to swim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a beta, so any mistakes are mine and please kindly let me know so I can fix them!


	3. When you close your eyes, what do you see?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEAD the trigger warnings, i plead with thee:  
> Non-con (graphic)  
> Underage (graphic)   
> Violence

          Spock had gotten used to these afternoons with James. They would show up at the lake, usually James was there first, and they would talk about almost everything. Everything barring what they had written on their sides of the line in the sand. Or they would teach each other things. Spock had slowly learned to swim, and they had also taught each other how to dance (Spock taught Jim traditional Vulcan dances) and fight (Spock taught Jim various Vulcan styles, and Jim taught him how to implement it in reality, though Spock wasn’t sure how Jim had gained suck information); Spock taught Jim Vulcan, and Jim taught Spock a few of bits of various Human languages that he had picked up. They had only gotten into two major disagreements over the 10 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days since Spock and James had started their impromptu meetings. One, James worth as a person, and hadn’t that been a spectacular explosion between the two, and whether or not Spock should join the Vulcan Science Academy. After their first argument over the subject of the VSA, they had gotten into two more even after swearing to not talk about it again. James had named them Incidents 1, 2, and 3. It was in an argument over the Vulcan Science Academy that Spock had shown a display of emotion.  _ “Of course, I am going to join! My mother loves me, Vulcan half and all, and she would be proud to have a son in the Academy!” _ Spock had yelled at Jim. And Jim had shrunk back, actually scared of Spock. Loud voices meant violence. It was the closest Spock had ever come to touching Jim, barring their fighting lessons, of course, and that desire Spock had to hold Jim close and promise never to harm him, to protect and treasure him, was something Spock studiously shoved into a little box in the back of his mind every night when he mediated, that way he could pretend to not know what it meant.

          This, however, was a first. The physical violence of learning to fight with someone who could snap him in half with one hand had never incited fear in Jim, but the yelling did. The yelling was a precursor to a snap, and a snap could be deadly. Frank had come close to teaching him that.

          Spock had avoided touching Jim since then purely because he did not want to frighten him further. Spock was sure that any attempt on his part to initiate physical contact would not appease the blue-eyed human. If Spock wasn’t sure that he was in love with James, he was now. A few strands of blond hair had fallen across his forehead. It was getting longer, but Jim showed no intentions of getting it cut. They were sitting cross legged and side by side next to the lake where Jim had taught Spock his theory of lines in the sand. Jim’s hair was still damp, a sure sign he had been swimming recently, drops running out of it and down onto Jim’s shoulders, following the harsh lines of bones and muscle, crisscrossed by scars that Spock was sure Jim would never talk about. Spock still wants to press his lips to the back of that neck, to lick away the water, to kiss across the scars, and have Jim let down his walls and tell him where the scars came from. 

          But he won’t because he can’t. Jim hasn’t said a word since Spock sat down next to him in the hot sand, Jim hasn’t even moved since Spock started descending down the hill towards the lake. Spock knows Jim well enough to know that they boy is waiting for him to ask something. It’s evident in the tenseness of Jim’s face and shoulders. The muscle in his jaw twitches every so often, a signal Spock has learned that says that Jim is thinking about how to phrase something that is causing an overload of emotions.

          “If you wish to speak, speak.” Spock tells Jim. The blue eyes swing around to Spock, halting when they meet the dark brown. Jim’s eyes narrow, and Spock doesn’t miss the steeling of the blue. 

          “I don’t love you.” Those words hit Spock far harder than they should, and Spock, if he were prone to indulging in his human side, would swear that the world just fell out from under his feet. Spock knows, logically, that when he and Jim had ended up participating in intercourse (Spock still knows that he  _ hurt  _ Jim that first time, when Jim begged, and plead and whimpered and told him to just do it, they could do it again with lube later), it was just physical, but the last time Spock’s shield’s had slipped and he felt Jim’s mind. His mind and body had screamed for his T'hy'la. Spock had finished, pulled out, and fled. Jim hadn’t followed him, and he hadn’t seen Jim since then. Until now.

          “I am aware,” Spock responds. Jim’s eyes narrow even more, and Spock is sure that something in his face must have betrayed something to Jim. Spock feels hurt well up, and pain and anger. How dare this meek, broken human shatter him and his control without even knowing? “I was not aware that you thought this was the beginnings of a romantic relationship. It was not. It was purely physical, started by you, to sate your human needs.” Spock knows he said something very, very wrong. James’ face goes slate blank, his eyes losing their light like a door being slammed shut. The human slowly stands up, and stares at Spock for a moment. Spock wonders if this is how victims feel when staring at the face of their killers, and suddenly it occurs to Spock that, with an eighty eight point seven percent probability, Jim has killed before on Tarsus IV.

          “I hope the VSA is as good as you think it will be but I can tell you right now no matter how perfect you are, it will never be enough for your father. Trust me, fathers aren’t worth trying to live your life for.” Spock doesn’t say anything as the blue-eyed boy walks away. He wonders if there would ever come a day where they could stop using words to cut each other where it hurts the most. Spock decides, with more pain than he would ever admit to, that the odds are decidedly not in their favor.

***

Jim knows this is a terrible idea. Knows it, but it doesn’t stop him from slipping onto the last supply shuttle and onto the starship bound for Earth’s Intergalactic Spaceport. Whatever it takes to get off Planet Vulcan, he’ll do it. Jim wishes he had gotten a glance at the name of the starship, but he’s on the ship and slipping like a ghost through the corridors before he has a chance. If anyone sees him, it’ll start with questioning and with kicking him into the brig or off the ship, or hell maybe they’ll skip straight over the questions and go straight to kicking him off the ship no questions asked. Either way, it’s not something Jim wants to risk. So, with a small bag of food he’d stolen from the S'chn T'gai household, and wearing human clothes Amanda had bought for him, Jim slips quietly through the pipes and catwalks into the depths of the engine room, tucked back into a corner he was sure no one else could get into, trying not to cry.

***

          Spock had never understood the concept of t'hy'la. He had known the beginnings of it when he looked at James. He had not, however, expected the panic, the true base human emotion of terror until he had walked into Jim’s room, and seen the paper, white and sharp and crisp and most likely stolen from

          Spock’s mother, folded on the beige comforter. 

          Spock hoped that it would simply be a note that Jim was out running. He did it often and at odd hours. It was not a note about running, at least, but not the kind Spock was hoping for. 

          Jim had left Vulcan. Jim had left  _ him _ . He felt something in his right side crack and fracture. And it  _ hurt.  _ Spock had known before he said the words that would shatter his whole world that they would hurt his relationship with Jim.  _ “I was not aware that you thought this was the beginnings of a romantic relationship. It was not. It was purely physical, started by you, to sate your human needs, _ ” he had said. He had expected distance, or coldness, or the complete and total ignorance of his being. He had not expected Jim to leave. He did not want Jim to leave, he desperately wanted Jim to stay. 

          His hands shook as he picked up the letter. He turned and walked down what were once familiar stairs and into the kitchen. His mother’s smile quickly faded when she looked at him and took the offered letter. Spock listened to her suck in a harsh breath through her teeth. She dropped the letter on the counter and, knowing Sarek is busy at the Embassy, pulls Spock against her. He allows this small comfort, putting his hands on her elbows, because Spock had never thought much about the human term of heartbreak before. He now decides that it is a perfect description of what he is feeling. 

          “I’m sorry, my kan-bu,” Amanda whispers because she knows Spock’s heart is broken and she knows that somewhere, out in the dark, vast reaches of space, there is a very lost and very broken little boy who hurts just as much as her baby does. Even if she wants to punch that boy in the face for breaking Spock’s heart. 

***

Jim hadn’t been sure where he’d be dropped off to when the starship had made port. He hadn’t even bothered to check the city name; as soon as his atoms had recombined into a solid body, he was off jogging down the streets putting as much distance, any distance really, as possible behind him. After all, there was no point in standing around. Loitering and questions get you killed. The sun has set, but the last of the light is clinging to the clouds, painting them navy blues, refusing to surrender them to the complete darkness of night.

          Jim practically jumps out of his skin when the door of a nearby building slams open, ricocheting off the post that’s stopping the roof from completely giving up and sliding down to the sidewalk.

          Three women walk out and bid each other goodnight. Jim watches as two get into a car, and drive away. The third pulls out and lights a cigarette before walking down the street. She stops when she notices him.

          “Hey baby boy. You look lost.” Jim feels the twitch of muscles under his skin. He doesn’t run as she crosses the street though, the clicks of her heels sounding like a firing squad cocking their guns.

          “I’m not lost,” Jim says, but he doesn’t sound nearly as gravelly or as confident as he thought he would.

          “Whatever you say baby. So, are you selling, or are you looking to buy?” The end of the cigarette flares up as she inhales, and Jim catches a flash of a smirk.

          “Mia.” The sharp voice makes Jim start. The woman merely rolls her eyes as she turns to face the stranger approaching them. 

          “Leave him alone,” the voice continues. “Do you want the regular tonight?” The woman with the cigarette, Mia grins before turning back to Jim.

          “He could join us, you know.” In the low light, Jim can’t get a good look at the stranger’s face, but she’s short, and the light from the street lamp across the street is catching on skin high on her legs.

          “No, he’s not joining us. Do you want the regular or not?” 

          “Sure, sweetness. The regular,” Mia says, allowing herself one last trail of her eyes over Jim’s body.

          “Then let’s go. You’re wasting both of our time trying to talk to this kid who’s so damn scared he’s about to shit himself.”

          “I’m not scared.” Jim snaps, even as his body flips completely into overdrive, trying to figure out if fight or flight is in the cards.

          “Sure you’re not. Head two blocks north and take a right. There’s an old warehouse there. You can probably find some shelter there. Tell them Heather sent you if anybody asks.” Jim nods slowly, and watches as the two women fade into the darkness, their passing marked only by lingering cigarette smoke and his memory of their shapes in the darkness.

Jim turns and follows the girl’s directions. The warehouse he ends up standing across the street from reminds him of the ones on Tarsus they used as crematoriums. He shakes his head. What was it Spock said? _“Wishing to change the past is illogical. It has already happened, there is nothing you can do to change events that have already occurred.”_  The reminder of Spock cuts into his chest like a knife. 

          The door of the warehouse creaking sounds like lighting cracking in the large, open room. There’s nothing but discarded cardboard and dust. He adjusts the now empty bag over his shoulder, glancing into the darker corners, checking for ghosts from memories of people he’s pretty sure won’t be there, before stepping across the floor towards the stairwell in the back.

          The concrete of the steps is crumbling under the stress of time. The second floor is sectioned off into what used to be office cubicles before the building was abandoned. Some of them have cardboard, or plywood spread across the top of them, creating makeshift rooves. The first seven Jim looks into are empty.

          “JT?” He whirls at the sound of his name and feels the world shift under his feet.

          “Koreva?” The name feels foreign in his mouth, too much time and too many bad memories distorting the distance between them into a canyon. The girl looks just as young to him as Jim is sure he looks to her.

          “What are you doing here?” Jim demands. She shifts her weight between her feet, but doesn’t cross her arms.

          “I could ask you the same thing,” She demands. “You and T’Raia were supposed to go to Vulcan.” Jim shifts, and tilts his chin up, glaring at the girl standing a few yards from him.

          “They broke T’Raia and I’s bond.” At this, Koreva does cross her arms. Jim knows she’s picking up a lot more from him, a lot more than he would ever let anyone else see. The last time he saw her, she had just slipped into a coma in the middle of a medbay on starship where the doctors wouldn’t be able to help her.

          “That still doesn’t explain why you’re here. On Earth. In Seattle. In this building. Or why I should let you stay here.”

          “I’m here because I planet hopped, and Seattle was the city I got deposited in. I was directed here by Heather.” He watches Koreva’s shoulders lose their straight line, and she sighs as she walks over to him.

          “There’s a few things you need to know if you want to stay here, Kirk.” In the year or so since he’s seen Koreva, Jim has grown enough to be a couple inches taller than her. He’s pretty sure one of those things is the dramatic increase in his food intake. “One, even though we don’t work together or for anyone but ourselves, we’re still a community. There’s not stealing, no hurting, no killing, nothing like that. The second is that no one comes back here. No clients, no adults, no one who might report this place to the authorities. Everyone is here for their own reasons and no one wants to be here, but they’re here because there’s no other choice, or it’s better than any other choice, and it’s better than being stuck in the system. Understand?”

          “Yeah. Seems pretty simple.” Jim watches her tilt her head.

          “Not as simple as Tarsus. But pretty simple. Come on.” He follows her back to the stairs and up to the fifth floor. She weaves her way through the cubicles to one in the back corner of the building, near the windows.

          “I like the view.” Koreva shrugs, and ducks into the cubicle. Jim stops, and looks out the window.

          The warehouse is on a hill, and the city of Seattle and her port sprawl out across the landscape below them, like someone grabbed the stars out of the sky and scattered them across the inky darkness of the earth at night. He turns, and slips into the cubicle behind Koreva. There’s a thin foam mat and sleeping bag along the far wall with a blanket folded up on the end. A small pile of clothes takes up the corner to the right of the entrance, and a small battery operated lantern takes up the left corner.

          “It’s not much but…” Koreva shrugs. Jim doesn’t miss the way she fiddles with the edge of her skirt as she sits on the sleeping bag. He sets his sack next to the door, and sits next to her, looking at the glittering city through the small entrance.

          “How did you get here, Kora?” It takes her a very long time to answer.

          “I woke up on the ship a few days after they dropped you off, right before we got to Earth. For the first six months afterwards, they kept me in Starfleet Medical. The long term unit or something. I think part of it was probably because they didn’t know what to with us. Except for me and Kevin, all of us were suddenly orphans with inside secrets to the Federation’s biggest disaster. Kev and I’s parents had sent us there to live with aunts and uncles.” She shrugs. “They gave us so many damn drugs we couldn’t even think straight. And every Tuesday at eleven am like clockwork, Starfleet Intelligence would come in, and the would interrogate us. What did we know? What could we tell them? I never said anything. What could I tell them, you know?” Jim hears her swallow, but he doesn’t dare look at her. Not when he knows the anguish he’ll see on her face.

          “And then at eleven thirty, when they finished with me, I could feel the other kids, JT. I didn’t need to hear them screaming, I could  _ feel _ it.” Jim finally looks over at the Betazoid girl. She’s glaring hard at the blanket, all harsh angles and too much feeling for a skinny fourteen-year old.

          “A little over six months in, my parents were killed in a shuttle crash. I took the opportunity and ran. No one was left to come looking for me, and Starfleet wants Tarsus and any reminders buried six feet under. They’re not going to look for me.” Jim reaches over and laces his fingers through hers.

          “I wasn’t supposed to leave Vulcan. A few months after they broke my bond with T’Raia, I tried to commit suicide. Didn’t work, obviously, but I ended up living with the only permanent human resident on Vulcan. Amanda Grayson.” He feels her dark eyes on him as he takes a deep breath. “And her bondmate and son.” He hears Koreva take a deep breath. Jim is also very sure she’s getting all sorts of information about the complicated tangle of feelings he has when it comes to S'chn T'gai Spock.

          “I think I fell in love with him. And I couldn’t stand it. Being such a dirty thing in that clean house. I wouldn’t risk tainting him. There’s blood on these hands, and I refuse to wipe it all over his hands, too.”

          “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” Koreva whispers.

          “Macbeth, Act Two, Scene Two,” Jim says. Koreva nods slowly.

          “How do you all earn money? How do you survive?” Jim asks. Kora sighs, and shifts, looking at the old, degraded sleeping bag again. Where ever they go, it seems, survival is always the question.

          “Depends. I work as a whore.” Jim feels his eyebrows raise. Kora shrugs. “It was what I was on Tarsus. It earned me and eight kids a living there, it ought to earn me a living here.”

          “Kora, you hate sex. You’re asexual, it makes you sick.” The girls just shrugs.

          “You know better than most, Jim. It’s never about what you want to do, it’s about what you have to do. I may not need to eat, but other people here do. If me being the whore that everyone thought I was makes one kid here have one more night where they don’t have to sell themselves to the first person who will take them, then that’s enough.”

          “What else? People have to do something else,” Jim demands.

          “Some people try begging, but that gets them taken into the authorities pretty quickly. Others sell drugs, other run drugs, some have normal jobs, but can’t get them into full time positions because people ask too many questions once a position goes full time. A lot of them work at the docks. People don’t ask as many questions down there. You show up, do a good job, and that’s enough for them. And they pay cash. Plus if you get work on a ship, you can have a guaranteed job for three months sometimes.” Jim shifts a little.

          “It could be worse,” he whispers. She squeezes their intertwined fingers.

          “It could be a lot worse.”

***

_           “It’s fucking cold. Are we really going out today?” Jim asks Koreva, stepping outside of the cave, and standing upright. _

_           “We don’t have a choice. We need more medicine for Thomas, if possible, and I need to get something good for the kids, it’s Christmas,” Koreva tells him. Jim nods, glancing back at the entrance of the cave. _

_           “I know. I just wish we didn’t have to leave them alone. I hate leaving them in the cold. I’m worried they’ll freeze to death,” Jim whispers to her, the white puffs of air curling around his face. _

_           “Stay with them,” Koreva tells him. Jim is pretty sure it’s because she wants him to take a break from what they do in the city, and for her to be able to deal with her own aftermath alone. Jim shakes his head. _

_           "I’ll go tell them we’re going to look for food,” Koreva says after the briefest moment of hesitation, and then she nods as if to reaffirm her words. She disappears in the cave and Jim looks over the edge of the hill. It’s a steep climb down, but it makes it easy to see if anyone is coming up the hill towards the cave. If Jim looks to his right, he’ll see the frozen pile of dirt laying over Annie’s body. It’s not something he wants to think about. Koreva steps back out, and they start the descent down the hill. It takes almost fifteen minutes on the icy ground. The forest is silent, dead. Jim likes to pretend that it’s grieving. It felt better that way, like the world was in an icy vigil for the 4,000 that Kodos had massacred, for everyone else who was dying still, driving the death toll higher and higher every day. _

_           The weight Jim was carrying around, as Mary Oliver once said, “It’s not the weight you carry/ but how you carry it -/ books, bricks, grief - it’s all in the way/ you embrace it, balance it, carry it.” Well, now if he tried really hard he could pretend the trees were carrying it, too. Silent sentinels watching over the grief and pain playing out around them, strong not because their trunks and branches did not break in the wind, but strong because even if their trunks did break, they still refused to be moved from their spot. _

_           “Are you going anywhere specific?” Koreva asks Jim. She always does. _

_           “The blue house at the end of 6 _ _ th _ _ street and the corner of 10 _ _ th _ _ and Main.” And Kodos. Always Kodos. He’s pretty sure Koreva knows this, but she never asks and never says. Jim buries his flinch with all of his other useless feelings. To feel right now is to be weak, and right now he needs to be strong. _

_           “Where are you going?” _

_           “I’m going to raid the hospital. See if there’s something left I can use for Thomas. And try to find a heat pack or something to thaw the water. See if there are any guards I can convince to give me some food.” _

_           “Ok.” _

_           Once they get to the city, they split up. Jim doesn’t want Koreva around for this any more than Koreva wants him around. Somehow, it seems better to suffer in their own private hells. Jim thinks that maybe if neither acknowledge what, exactly, the other does to get food or any supplies or anything they can use to keep the kids alive, then it’s clearly something that can be ignored and forgotten. At this point, Jim’s not sure that their efforts will keep the kids alive, but he can’t just  _ stop  _ either. Because Kevin still needs him. He shivers as she slides into the backyard of the blue house. The knock sounds almost as loud as the shots from the guard’s guns. The woman there opens the door. Jim never bothered to learn her name, and she never bothered to learn his. _

_           “Come in.” She steps back, and Jim walks in. It’s a pattern now. He walks in, the woman strips her pants and underwear off, laying back on the couch and spreading her legs. Jim kneels between her legs, puts his head down, and gets her off as fast as possible. Jim runs through stuff, reciting Shakespeare or anatomy in his head, anything else, which only makes it longer because if he doesn’t pay attention to what he’s doing between the older woman’s legs, then it takes longer, and then he has to spend more time there, so he has to focus on it. Jim would also be lying if he said it’d didn’t get him hard. Of course, she never offered anything, and the kids need to eat, and Jim is selfish for thinking about getting off rather than on feeding his kids. _

_           So he focuses on putting his tongue, his mouth, his fingers in exactly the right order, the right sequence. He turns it into a game. How much pressure here with his fingers, combined with how much suction right there from his mouth. His record is three and half minutes to get the woman off. Jim beats the record today by 13 seconds. He gets two slices of hard, dry bread for his efforts. It’s not much, but it should keep the kids alive for another week. If he’s lucky. Jim takes them, carefully putting them in the bag he carries, and tries to be quiet as he dry heaves, leaning against the side of the house, shaking, and trying to not panic. Thomas. Kevin. T’Raia. Elias. Darcy. Rachel. Charlette. Koreva. Jim’s body shivers. He still has kids to feed. _

_           The city is silent as he moves through it. It’s just as dead as most of its citizens. Jim moves through the shadows provided by the houses and the abandoned buildings to the alley. The alleyway is skinny, his shoulders almost brush either side when he walks straight, and the brick is rough as he trails his hand along it. The roughness of it catches at the callouses and scabs on his hand, scratching at them and threatening to rib them off. Jim presses his hand a little harder into the brick. The short alleyway opens into a courtyard where the stores on the block had done inventory and stored extra crates and boxes. The tables the workers had made with some of the empty wooden crates were abandoned now. Short, small icicles hung off some of the rooves. The only bright side of the ice is that it’s easier to get the kids clean water. “It’s just like a popsicle!” Jim had told them. Now, though, the ice was dangerous for already low body temperatures. Kevin, ever the logical one, had gone on to tell him how it couldn’t be a popsicle because it didn’t have flavor. T’Raia, ironically given that she was born and bred on a desert planet, was the least concerned about the ice, crunching on it happily from her safe place in Jim’s lap. Jim closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.  _

_           The air was sharp and crisp, like he was standing in the middle of the cornfields in winter on the farm he grew up on, not the center of what used to be a teeming city, spilling over its borders and into the wild, wild country around it. Jim opens his eyes, and heads to the pile of boxes and crates in the corner. He uncovers the crate they use to store their hauls before taking it back to the kids. Koreva had managed to find a few protein packs that had enough on the inside the kids could lick some out, and a calcium supplement. Jim thinks that it’s not good news: the calcium supplement would have come from the hospital which means that there’s nothing else left. Jim adds his haul to the box, covers it again, and sits silently, waiting to see if anyone followed him in. Nothing moves, and the small square falls silent again. A weird silence, though. Almost reverent, the kind of silence one holds in a graveyard, respectful, but not wanting to break the haunting in the air. And, of all things, Tarsus IV is a graveyard first and foremost. Jim lets the silence stretch on, reticent to break it, to move. He’s tired of fighting and he knows it. It would most likely be kinder to just let the children die, or kill them outright, rather than prolong their suffering, but he can’t do that, and he knows that… he knows that… he does. _

_           The cold that has come to dominate their landscape in the last few months has sunken deeper than his bones. It’s made it into his soul, and he knows, damnit does he know, he needs to fight it, should fight it. But he’s too tired, and he has fully surpassed the point of starvation, and now his brain doesn’t even bother to tell him that his body is hungry. He broke the pathways in his head. Jim wants to wait another few minutes, but whether that’s because he’s actually worried that someone followed him, or because he’s staving off the inevitable, he’s not sure. But he starts passing the time anyway, reciting any and all of his medical knowledge from the books off of the shelf in the family library that made him want to be a doctor. _

_           Hypovolemic shock, also known as hemorrhagic shock, is a life-threatening condition that results when you lose more than one-fifth of your body’s blood or fluid supply. This severe fluid loss makes it impossible for the heart to pump a sufficient amount of blood to your body. The average adult human contains 1.2 to 1.5 gallons of blood. So, to enter hypovolemic shock, an average adult would lose between .24 and .3 gallons of blood. Jim doesn’t want to think about how little blood he or the kids would have to lose to enter hypovolemic shock.  _

_           He trails his fingers over his ribs, naming them as he goes, naming his ilium, gently pressing his fingers into the iliac crest, over the slight dip to the greater trochanter of the femur, down the femur to the patella, then the fibula and tibia. He’s about to start with the bones on his arms, but he thinks of the kids, again, and instantly feels guilty for wasting so much precious time. It’s Christmas today, or at least close to Christmas day.  _ God, this is going to ruin Christmas for them _ , he thinks. But he sighs quietly and shoves off the wall anyway. It takes him less than three minutes to walk to 10 _ _ th _ _ and Main. _

_           The guard looks up, and a sick grin twists onto his features. _

_           “Wasn’t sure you’d show up,” he leers. Jim’s spine tightens. _

_           “You promised chocolate as a Christmas present if I showed up. So here I am,” he says, his voice tighter than the nonchalance he would have liked. He can already see the guard getting hard, getting off on the knowledge that he doesn’t even have to tie Jim up or beat him down to have full control over him. _

_           “Inside,” the man orders, and Jim hears the sound of the guard’s belt coming undone as he walks into the warehouse. He mechanically takes his boots off, boots with the soles worn so thin that if he steps in water or stands on dead and frozen grass for too long, that water seeps in from the bottom. Jim’s head is telling him to run, alternating that with protests of him not having a choice, and the kid’s names. Annie died for this. Cassey died for this.  _ I don’t have a choice. What I want doesn’t matter, _ he tells himself. He sees the goosebumps on his legs but can’t register the fact that it’s cold, not with so much adrenaline in his system. _

_           “Take your shirt off,” the guard orders. Jim does, letting it crumple on the ground. He tries to hide his shivers, but standing naked in an empty office building doesn’t really work towards the containment of body heat. The man smirks, reaching out to smack his chest. _

_           “You’re all points and edges. You ever going to feel like I’m not fucking a stick figure?” The man sneers. _

_           “Not eating like this,” Jim whispers. _

_           “What was that?” The man asks. _

_           “Nothing, sir,” Jim whispers. _

_           “That’s what I thought,” he growls out. “Turn around. Put your hands on the desk.” Jim complies, and hears the tell-tale whistle of the belt moments before it’s biting into his back. The guard wasn’t usually like this, normally they both just pulled their pants down, he stuck his dick in with no fanfare, fucked Jim until he came, and then left him bleeding and with blood on his lip from biting it to try to stop his crying. Someone must have pissed the guard off. _

_           “Did Kodos not give you a lollipop?” Jim bites out after the belt bites into his back another time, against Jim’s better judgement. The guard’s boot lands against Jim’s ribs, and he feels them crack. A whimper of pain rips out of Jim’s mouth. The guard grabs him by the hair and drags Jim up from where his knees had given out, slamming him onto the desk. _

_           “I’m going to rip you open,” the man growls, and Jim spits in his face before he can really think about what he’s doing, but right now, he can only see Frank’s face, not the man currently in the building with him. The man uses his hand’s position in Jim’s hair to slam his head against the desk. Jim sees stars, and then his legs are being kicked apart, and a rough hand is squeezing his dick, and his body is responding to it, blood running south. He’s fucking enjoying this. That’s what a hard dick means, doesn’t it? That he’s enjoying this? That this must be consensual if he likes it? _

_           Two plus two is four. Four plus four is eight. A thoracotomy is an incision into the pleural space of the chest. A spinal tap, also known as a lumbar puncture, is a medical procedure in which a needle is inserted into the spinal canal, most commonly to collect cerebrospinal fluid for diagnostic testing. Jim slams his forehead into the desk to try to muffle his whimpers of pain, even as his dick gets harder. He can already feel the tearing, and he’s pretty sure he’ll be bleeding significantly on the outside this time. _

_           “That’s right,” the man growls. “Does it fucking hurt? Don’t you like it, you little whore?” he snarls. Jim just tightens his fingers on the edge of the desk, arms stretched and taught, and waits to feel the warm rush between his legs that tells him this hell will be over. It seems to take years for it to come, and he almost misses it with his own orgasm. He whimpers as his body tries to reorient itself, tries to process the pain with the pleasure.  _

_           The man laughs as Jim dry heaves onto the concrete floor, his stomach cramping. Jim’s legs give out, and his knees make a sickening sound on the floor when they meet the concrete. When it comes down to concrete and bones, concrete always wins. The guard laughs but throws one half eaten ration bar and part of a Hershey's bar at Jim. Jim almost cries, but his body won’t produce the tears, won’t waste the energy on something so fruitless as crying. The door slams behind the guard when he leaves. Jim’s not sure how long he stays sitting on the floor, it’s long enough that the bleeding has stopped, before he manages to stand on shaking legs. He tries to focus on anything but the pain, anything but the feeling of fluids running out of his ass and down his legs. Thomas. Kevin. T’Raia. Elias. Darcy. Rachel. Charlette. Koreva.  _ I finish this, I go back to my kids. _ He holds onto that, the thought of cradling the two-year-old Vulcan against him, where he can keep her safe, of running his fingers through Kevin’s hair, of seeing Thomas smile despite having a broken leg and the worst chances of survival, is where he finds the strength to pull his shirt and jeans back on; Jim stopped bothering with underwear when he started doing this regularly. _

_           It’s a slow walk back to where he stored the bread. Koreva is waiting there, and he doesn’t miss the way tears well up in her eyes when she catches some of Jim’s emotions. _

_           “Sorry. I know it’s all way to fucking much,” Jim says. Koreva shakes her head. _

_           “It’s been worse before. I’m fine.” She doesn’t break eye contact, and the emptiness in her eyes belies her statement. _

_           “I wish my head was as empty as your eyes,” Jim whispers. Koreva stands up. _

_           “I wish my head was empty, too,” She whispers back. They stare at each other, trying to find the motivation to keep going in another person when they can’t find it in themselves. _

_           “What are we doing, JT? We’re keeping these kids alive, but god at what cost?” Jim looks down at the stones beneath his feet. _

_           “We can’t just stop.” Koreva is looking away when he looks back up. _

_           “I know,” she says. She doesn’t meet his eyes as she turns and walks out of the courtyard, disappearing into the overwhelming silence of the dead city. _

_           The walk to Kodos’ mansion is long. Or it feels like it is. It’s really only about ten minutes from the square. Jim blames it on the panic that always claws its way into his throat, no matter how many times he reminds himself that this is nothing but a business transaction, sex for Kodos keeping his guards out of the mountains. Simple, easy, consensual. Hell, Jim was the one who asked for this. Jim’s mind seems hell bent on refusing that though, revolting at the idea that it is that simple.  _

_           The path through the buildings is familiar, around the back of the property through the hole in the fence, and the guard by the back door takes him up to Kodos’ office. The Governor smiles at him as Jim walks in, and the sound of the door closing behind him sounds oddly final. Jim has the distinct sensation of being locked in a room with a hungry lion and it’s hard not to throw up. Kodos frowns when he sees the blood on Jim’s pants. _

_           “What happened?” He asks, feigning concern. _

_           “I partook in an exchange, sir,” Jim whispers tilting his chin to stare at the older man across the desk. _

_           “What kind?” Kodos’ voice is hard. _

_           “Sex for food,” Jim says, voice as empty and even as he hoped it would be. Kodos stands up and walks over, kneeling on one knee in front of Jim to allow Kodos to look slightly up at him. Kodos tilts his head, and looks concerned. Jim wants to rip that look off his face, but he can’t. T’Raia’s life depends on it. Kevin’s life depends on it. _

_           “Why didn’t you ask me?” Kodos asks him. _

_           “Because it would make the balance of trade uneven between us, sir,” Jim says, meeting Kodos’ eyes. Kodos smiles. _

_           “Smart little boy, aren’t you? You were always one of my favorites, James.” And Kodos grabs Jim’s shoulder as he stands up, fingers pressing into the bones, and pushes him along through to the bathroom. Kodos turns and looks down at him. His eyes are dark with fury as Jim looks back at him. _

_           “I want every bit of him off of you before I touch you. Remember, the deal you made for your kids?” He asks. Jim has to clench his jaw to keep from making a retort he would regret.   _

_           “Yes, sir,” he whispers, and it sounds too much like submission, too much like giving up, and the words leave an acrid taste in Jim’s mouth. Kodos leaves, and Jim showers. Whatever Kodos plans on doing, it will hurt.  _

_           Kodos is waiting when Jim walks back out, and the governor points to the door to the bed room. He doesn’t let Jim get dressed again. Jim won’t need to for the... activities he knows the governor has planned. Jim starts reciting the steps of an emergency C-section. Anything other than the helpless resignation. Jim can’t hide the flinch when Kodos pinches the skin over his hip bone. _

_           “Not very feisty today, are we? Did you sleep well last night?” Jim watches as Kodos grabs rope off the bed, and successfully hides the flinch as Kodos walks behind him. _

_           “Not particularly.” Jim can’t hide the flinch when Kodos tightens the rope around his wrists. It says everything Kodos won’t say out loud: Jim belongs to him body and soul, and Jim gave it willingly. _

_           “Close your eyes.” Jim does, and feels the fabric tightened over his eyes and across the bridge of his nose. No matter what Jim tried to think about, his body responds to the rope and being unable to see. He likes it. Likes what Kodos is doing to him. It couldn’t be wrong if he liked it, could it? Jim threw his mind full force into anything other than the feeling of Kodos’ hands running over him. Jim couldn’t fight it, didn’t think he wanted to fight it, but focusing on what he would do to fix a compound fracture of the tibia was far better than realizing he wanted this. _

_           Of course, when Kodos got done admiring what was his, and actually got around to shoving two fingers in Jim’s ass, he was torn right back into the present, and the pleasure racing through his veins right along with the pain. The pain was unbelievable, his body shuddering, and crying out it’s protests, but the pleasure singing along his nerves, right under his skin, curling hot and low in his stomach slowly dampens the pain, and soon overwhelms it. With blood in his mouth and pleasure between his legs, Jim tries to remind himself that he’s not here because it feels so damn good, but because the guards will stay out of the mountains for another night, and for another night the kids will be ok.  _

_           Time blurs into a meaningless mix of pleasure and pain, and Jim tries to map out as many medical procedures as he can; to pretend that he hasn’t gotten off on what Kodos is doing two different times. _

_           When Kodos is finally done ripping him apart from the inside, he ties Jim face down and spread eagle on the bed. The scabs on his wrists and ankles from the same rope tied to the same bed posts open again. When Jim hears the sound of the whip, his mental faculties devolve into simply repeatedly yelling Thomas. Kevin. T’Raia. Elias. Darcy. Rachel. Charlette. Koreva, bouncing off the insides of his skull, ringing through his ears, pouring into the salt water running out of his eyes, THOMASKEVINT’RAIA ELIASDARCYRACHELCHARLETTEKOREVA on repeat. Maybe, if he keeps thinking their names, like a mantra, he won’t have time to feel guilty for enjoying the pain. For enjoying the pain of the whip biting into his back. If he keeps chanting his kids’ names, then maybe he won’t wonder what the difference is between Kodos and his whip, and Frank and his belt, and maybe he won’t have time to wonder why Kodos’ feels so much better. _

_           Jim’s not sure when he passed out, and he’s not sure if it’s from pain or pleasure, but he wakes up to a doctor stemming the blood flow from his back. The Doctor never heals the wounds completely, he just stops the bleeding to ensure Jim lives long enough to come back to Kodos in a useable condition the next day. The Doctor doesn’t do anything about the blood between Jim’s legs. Kodos is so possessive, he doubts Kodos would let him even if the doctor did want to help. But for now, Jim’s kids are safe, and the kids have food. They’ll live through tomorrow at least. _

_           Walking is painful. Koreva stops with him, and they sit on a log. Jim is pretty sure that Koreva is doing it because she knows Jim won’t ask to rest when he needs it, but he also knows that her shields were destroyed when the first set of one hundred colonists were murdered, and that the kid’s emotions are threatening to rip her apart. He also knows that if it gets too be to much, she might very well tip over the edge into a coma.  _

_           As they make their way into the small cave, Jim thinks that maybe, just maybe, he and Koreva can pull this off. Maybe they can keep them all alive. But as he looks at her, and the cracks starting to show, he wonders what price will Koreva pay? What price will all of them pay for survival? _

***

          Jim jerks awake out of the horrible reliving of Tarsus his mind tends to go on at night, and tries to slowly breathe out through his nose. Koreva isn’t in the spot on the sleeping bag next to him where they fell asleep last night. He’s not exactly surprised, the light coming through the windows is still a thick grey, it’s barely enough to see, but that’s good enough for him to be awake. He was never good at sleeping after Tarsus and he’s sure Kora isn’t either, so it’s no surprise to him that she’s already up and gone. 

          He takes another look around the couple square feet Kora inhabits. He’s not stupid enough to assume she calls it home, or even says she lives here. He’s pretty sure she’d just say she inhabits it. It makes it sound distant and temporary. It makes it easier to leave. He looks towards the entrance when he hears the soft whisper of feet on the floor, and watches as Kora appears, grinning a challenge at him.

          “Come on.” She gestures for him to follow her, and he does.

          “Where are we going?” He asks. She throws a wink over her shoulder at him.

          “That’d ruin the suspense, JT. Just follow me.”

          “Always,” he says. This earns him another grin, one that is a little more sincere and a little less challenging.

          “It’s something good, I promise.” She gestures impatiently for him to follow her down the stairs, and he jogs down after her, allowing her to grab his hand at the end and pull them across the open first floor, the metal door clanging closed behind them. The city is still asleep, a thick blanket of fog hanging low over the city like a child pulling a blanket over their head. The city streets are slick and shiny with rain and the trees are a darker green in the low light of dawn. Kora pulls him down the streets like she’s followed this path many times before. They pass through a neighborhood with pin neat houses sitting back from even neater perfectly manicured lawns. A dog barks through the door of one of them, and Kora just shakes her head. Jim isn’t sure where she got the clothes, but she’s wearing a pair of jeans several sizes too big, held up by brown string, and an old, equally too big sweatshirt with the bottom half of the sleeves cut off, making them end half way between her wrists and elbows. The shoes she’s wearing have almost completely frayed out on the sides.

          “The city isn’t so bad. Most people in the neighborhoods will leave you alone as long as you don’t cause any trouble,” Kora tells him.

          “And if you do cause trouble?”

          “Who do you think they’ll believe? The problem, homeless children or the PTA mom and hard-working father and their darling children?”

          “That’s such bullshit. No one steals or does crap like this because they want to,” Jim hisses. Kora just shrugs.

          “It could be worse. There are some planets where you get arrested and sterilized for prostitution with no trial.”

          “You’re fucking with me,” Jim can’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. Kora just looks sideways at him.

          “I wish.”

          “Fuck,” Jim whispers. Kora nods. They turn the corner, and Kora grins at him and pulls him down an alleyway behind her. The pass trash cans and dumpsters that smell of wet cardboard and general waste. She stops, and listens for half a second before walking to the low wall surrounding two trash cans, and she grabs two take out boxes off of the wall and motions for Jim to follow her out of the alley.

          “What’s that?” He whispers as soon as they turn back into the street.

          “On Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays the owner leaves out boxes of leftover food for street kids like us to come grab. One box per person. It’s enough to get you through a month of not eating, but it’s actually not too hard to find food. People throw out boxes of pizza with pizza crusts in it a lot, and that’s enough to last a few weeks. Of course, if you steal a can of something, you can save it for times when the food isn’t so easy to find. It makes it easier, so you don’t eat rotten food, which can make you sick and it’s best to avoid getting sick.” Jim nods.

          “You act like you think I’m staying,” he tells her. Kora shrugs.

          “Do or don’t, it's up to you.” Jim narrows his eyes at her.

          “Whatever it is, spit it out,” he tells her. She stops, turning to stare at him in the middle of the sidewalk, holding the two white Styrofoam boxes close to her chest. It crosses his mind just how ridiculous they must look as the streets slowly slide out of the vague, murky greyness of dawn and into the slight clearer greyness of day.

          “I’m simply telling you the tips and tricks of surviving here if you choose to stay.” Jim crosses his arms and tightens his stance.

          “That’s bullshit,” Jim hisses. Kora meets his eyes full on, her spine straightening.

          “Whatever you say, JT.” She turns, and starts walking down the sidewalk.

          “You want me stay don’t you?” He blurts, the pieces suddenly falling into place. She whirls to face him, hair falling around her face.

          “Don’t you dare stay out of some twisted sense of duty or responsibility to me. I was doing just fine before you showed up.”

          “Who says I would do that?” Jim spits back, walking towards her until they’re facing each other across the sidewalk again, glaring at each other through the fire of their anger and pain.

          “Because, James Kirk, for better or worse, I know you.” Jim doesn’t say anything, just glares at her for a second longer.

          “I’m not staying out of a sense of duty,” he finally grits out. Kora’s posture relaxes slightly, but the fire doesn’t die in her eyes. “I’m staying because I have nowhere else to go, and because I don’t know what to do from here. I didn’t think about much beyond getting off Vulcan.” Kora slowly nods, and Jim is sure she’s reading his emotions, searching for sincerity.

          “Okay, then. Follow me.” Jim nods, and follows her as she weaves through the Seattle streets.

          Jim can smell the ocean long before he can see it. They pass the last in a long line of buildings, and suddenly the slate grey waters of the Puget Sound are spreading out to their right, older apartment buildings rise a few stories to their left, and on the other side of the Sound the skyline of Seattle rises out of the water to blend in with the clouds of the sky. A large cargo freighter with a burnt orange hull is the only splash of color in the otherwise grey and black world. It looks out of place alone on the water, and Jim has the oddest sensation of identifying with a boat.

          He follows Kora’s lead, and sits down on one of the stone benches, opening his Styrofoam box that Kora passes to him, and digging in with the fork supplied in the box.

          The city slowly lightens up a few more shades, and the freighter slides farther across the Sound as they eat in companionable silence.

          “Kora.” She almost looks startled by Jim’s sudden interruption of their silence.

          “Yeah?” She almost sounds hesitant.

          “What did you want to do when you grew up? Before Tarsus went and fucked it all to hell?” Jim is startled to see a blush start high on her cheek bones and spread across her face as she turns her attention back to her food.

          “It’s stupid,” she mutters into the remains of someone else’s chicken scaloppini.

          “I’m sure it’s not,” Jim says. She just shakes her head.

          “I wanted to be a professional dancer. Travel around the galaxy in one of those performing groups. I wanted to get experiences, and travel and learn and just live. I don’t think that’s liable to happen now,” she tells him, staring hard into the chicken.

          “I wanted to be a doctor.” She looks up at him.

          “Really?”

          “Yeah.” Jim shrugs and spins his fork through the noodles in his white box. “After seeing so many bodies broken and taken apart, I don’t think I could put one back together. I don’t think I  _ want _ to.” Jim feels the heat radiating off Koreva’s body as she leans her shoulder into his.

          “Well. We’re only fourteen, don’t the adults always tell us we don’t need to have everything figured out yet, anyway?” Jim looks down at her perfectly straight face, eyes too wide to portray complete innocence, and he can’t help the desperate giggles the explode out of his chest, and it doesn’t take long for Koreva to collapse into his side in her own fit of giggles. If any one of the passersby finds anything off about two ragtag teenagers in giggling hysterics on a park bench, no one says anything.

***

          Jim would always and forever refuse to admit that he worried about Kora whenever she went out for the night, but the gentle smile and the life slowly returning to her eyes when she came back to their little piece of safety in the early hours of the morning told him she knew. She never said anything, though. But she knew and that was enough. She would slide into the sleeping bag next to him, and they’d close their eyes and pretend that the world didn’t exist for another few hours. Like if they stayed there like that, they could forget that they were really just two kids who refused to give a single inch, who fought tooth and nail against a world dead set on erasing them. 

          But eventually they would crawl out and move on to their respective day time activities. Jim wasn’t really sure what Kora did during the day, but he would walk down to the docks, and wander around until one of the workers would yell at him and shove a couple credits into his hand for the few hours of physical labor he’d work with them. It wasn’t much,  but it got clothes washed at the laundromat and enough food that he saw muscles taking shape. On nights when Kora didn’t go out, they’d sit up together just inside the doorway and eat whatever scraps they’d managed to find that day. 

          “Kora, teach me to dance.” He watches as the Betazoid snaps her mouth closed and studies him. 

          “Why?” She asks. He shrugs. 

          “I don’t know.” She nods once. 

          “Watch and learn,” she says, grinning at him, and pulling her sweatshirt over her head to drop it on the sleeping bag. He turns to sit in the middle of the doorway, and crosses his legs, watching as she takes a few steps away from him, standing halfway between him and the window.

          And right before his eyes, she suddenly becomes an entirely different person. She’s all confidence and grace, power and precision. She’s back lit by the lights of the city, and it’s like she’s on a stage. Jim is captivated as she moves, feet making quiet whispers across the floor as she becomes something ethereal. 

          He doesn’t know what song she’s following in her head, but he knows it’s one of fight and fire. Her hair whips around, a curtain of black silk shining in the city lights. She turns a small section of the fifth floor of an abandoned warehouse into a stage, the lights of the city in stage lights, and a one person crowd into a sold out show. 

          She finishes her dance, and bows slightly to her one person audience. 

          “So you want to learn how to dance?” She asks, winking as she does so, and Jim can’t help the sincere smile that crosses his face. 

          “Yes.” 


	4. I don’t like walking around this empty house (so hold my hand, I’ll walk with you my dear)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is happier. Yay! That being said: There is pretty obviously implied/referenced abortion. It's a short paragraph and isn't graphically discussed (or even discussed at all it's like seven sentences maybe)   
> Please please please let me know what you think!

          Jim isn’t sure when it happened. If he thinks too much about it, he’s pretty sure he should have noticed before. But it’s always taken a back seat to other things, always been something that could be ignored. Until now. 

          Now, there’s a black haired, dark eyed girl sitting across from him and she’s got a gentle smile on her face, and she’s saying “happy birthday, Jim,” and Jim knows that she’s not thinking about his father, she’s not thinking about what his father did, she’s thinking about Jim and that it’s  _ his  _ birthday, and he’s fifteen, and suddenly it all makes so much sense. 

          James Tiberius Kirk is in love with Koreva Ochoi, and he doesn’t have any regrets. Does it hurt somewhere deep in the left side of his chest when he thinks of red hot sand, and spiced tea, and pointed ears? Yes. But there’s something equally enchanting about the young woman in front of him, and the way she is so opposite to Vulcan. He decides sex is the difference. Sex destroyed his relationship with Spock. Sex is an exchange, a power play, a way to destroy a person, and nothing more. And Kora will never want and never expect sex from him. That, he realizes, must be why their relationship works. 

          “You’ve been staring into space, JT. What are you thinking about?” Her smile is soft, and warm and genuine. 

          “I think I love you,” he says. And she grins, and her teeth are still light blue from the cupcake frosting and her eyes scrunch up at the corners, and when she gently presses her lips to his, he can feel her grinning. 

          “I think I love you too, Jim.”

          “You kissed me. You hate sex.”

          “There’s a big difference between sex and kissing Jimmy. Sex is about power and control and the ability to dominate and humiliate someone. Kissing is about intimacy. It’s about I love you and I trust you. It’s why I never kiss clients.” And Jim just grins, and gently kisses her again. It’s innocent and sweet and tastes just like he thought first kisses should. 

***

_           The sky is still smoking from the bodies of the first five hundred colonists. Jim had helped dig mass graves for some, but Kodos had quickly realized it wasted too much time and manpower, and instead had resorted to burning the bodies in the brick warehouses. The fires ran all day and night. _

_           The girl walking silently next to him had shown up three days ago with four small children in tow. It had not taken much more than a look, and a silent pact was made for the two of them to work together to do anything to keep their thirteen kids alive. He stops when she does, her spine straightening, eyes scanning the trees.  _

_           “It’s not going to take long before the guards start searching through the hills. Everyone knows Kodos isn’t going to stop with the first five hundred colonists he’s killed.” Jim shifts to look at her, and doesn’t have time to even raise his hands before she’s yanking his right arm up behind his back, and slamming him into a tree.  _

_           “What are you hiding, JT? I can feel it, you know.” Jim tries to wriggle out of her grip, but the girl just pulls his arm higher up behind his back and leans more of her weight against him.  _

_           “The hell do you mean, you can feel it?” Jim grinds out, keeping his left hand firmly against the tree.  _

_           “Every time those kids call you JT. I can feel it. The insidious guilt. The terror that I know isn’t from everything going on around us. So what are you hiding, JT? Do you work for Kodos?”  _

_           “No!” Jim can’t help the emphatic denial that jumps out of his throat. He can feel the panic building in his chest, right under his lungs.  _

_           “So what is it?”  _

_           “My name isn’t JT Wellcott. It’s James Tiberius Kirk.” The girl lets go of his arm and steps back. He watches her watch him as he rubs his shoulder. She nods once, slowly, like she’s trying to decide if she believes him.  _

_           “Are you going to tell them?” Jim asks.  _

_           “No,” She says.  _

_           “Who are you? How did you know?” Jim asks.  _

_           “I’m Koreva Ochoi. I’m a betazoid.” And Jim sucks in a breath because she wouldn’t have just known about the colonists dying, she must have  _ felt  _ the five hundred dead colonists die.  _

_           “I’m sorry,” Jim says. Koreva just shakes her head.  _

_           “Aren’t we all?” Jim looks back out into the dying trees.  _

_           “Do you think we can do it?” He asks.  _

_           “Do what?” _

_           “Keep all thirteen alive.” Jim watches as the muscle in her jaw works.  _

_           “We can try. Help will come at some point, and until then we will keep going.” Jim holds out his hand. _

_           “Promise?” She grabs his. Her hand is warm and her grip is strong and steady.  _

_           “Promise.” _

***

          Jim wasn’t crazy. Well, he was pretty sure he wasn’t crazy. He was good at reading people, he knew that. And something is wrong with Koreva. Because the tightness of her shoulders and the shuttering of her eyes say more than her mouth ever will. 

          “What’s wrong?” He asks as they’re laying curled together in the sleeping bag. Her hand has slid under his shirt, and is dancing across his ribs, running over the dips and muscle lines, across the bones. 

          “Nothing’s wrong. Why do you ask?” 

          “You seem off,” Jim tells her. Kora snorts. 

          “I’m fine, Jimmy.” She punctuates her sentence by kissing his collarbone where she can reach it. He rolls so he can look her in the eyes, the orange light of sunset slowly filtering into the tiny cubicle. There’s something there, something hiding in the dark of her eyes that he can’t decipher. She smiles, and puts her hand on the side of his face. 

          “Honestly, I’ll be fine.” 

          “There’s a big difference between ‘I’m fine’ and ‘I’ll be fine’.” Jim frowns at her. 

          “Ok, I’m sorry. But I will be fine, I promise.” Jim just huffs.

          “Fine. Are you going out tonight?” Jim watches Kora’s eyes drift over his shoulder and stare at some point out past the window. 

          “Kind of. I’m going out but not to work.” 

          “Kora?” Jim watches her frown. 

          “Jim, just…” She trails off, her eyes never losing their unfocused look. “Don’t ask too many questions, ok? Just let it go.” There’s something heartbreaking and painful in Kora’s expression that Jim can’t decipher. 

          “Ok,” he whispers because they operate on trust, they always have. She doesn’t say anything else as she crawls out of the sleeping back and pulls on jeans and the tennis shoes that have practically  worn out at the edges. She doesn’t make eye contact before she leaves, just whispers a quiet thank you that echoes in the space she just occupied. 

***

          Jim jolts awake when he hears someone slide into the entrance of the cubicle. 

          “It’s just me,” Kora whispers, but something is wrong, something is off because her voice isn’t this broken, it doesn’t ever sound like someone pulled broken glass through it. 

          “Kora, what’s wrong?” Before Jim can turn on the lantern, Kora is pushing her face into the juncture of his neck and shoulder and wrapping her arms around his chest and squeezing. He can’t hear her crying, but he feels it in the bone deep tremors that reverberate off of her spine, in the way her breath stutters erratically against his neck and she buries any sound somewhere deep inside her chest. Jim feels tears welling up in his eyes, too. 

          “Kora, Kora what’s going on?” 

          “I did it, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, oh god what have I done?” Jim can barely understand her half-muttered, half-gasped words against his throat. He gently grabs her face and pulls her back so he can look at her face. Tears are running down her face, and she’s bitten her lower lip so much that it’s red and swollen. 

          “Kora, talk to me,” Jim tells her in a voice much steadier than he feels. Something flashes in her eyes, but it dies as soon as it comes, and something cold and empty and dark takes it place. 

          “I couldn’t, in good conscience, bring a baby into this, Jim. I couldn’t,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.” And it clicks into place. Of course she couldn’t, and of course it would be so, so much worse for a betazoid to have to feel the life inside of her die. 

          “Kora… I grieve with thee,” Jim whispers, because nothing else seems right, and nothing else conveys the message that he wants to get across as Jim presses his forehead against Kora’s. “I don’t love you any less because you got an abortion.” Jim hears as much as feels her quiet sob, and he’s reaching out and pulling her closer again. The sudden, harsh gasps for air and the wetness of salt water on his shoulder are the only signs of her grief, the only signs of her breaking apart. 

***

          “I’m going back to school.” The PADD makes a soft noise as it drops onto the sleeping bag in front of the book Jim had borrowed from the library. 

          “You’re what?” He asks. Kora just rolls her eyes. 

          “You heard me. I’m going back to school. I’m going to graduate high school so I can get my instructor’s certification.” Jim tilts his head. There’s something burning in the space in her eyes that never regained any light after she went to the clinic almost a month ago. Jim grins at her, and she relaxes. 

          “You’re going to be the best damn dance teacher,” he tells her, and Kora snorts as she sinks down across from him. 

          “Keep telling yourself that, Kirk,” She teases. Her smile fades and Jim watches as she tilts her head and watches him. 

          “You should go back to school, too.” Jim doesn’t say anything, he just glares out the window as the Vulcan school comes to mind, and with its slanted eyebrows and pointed ears that always hover on his periphery, always hover close enough that if he stops and thinks for just a second too long, he ends up thinking about the person that accompanies those ears and eyebrows, and that always makes something in the left side of his chest  _ hurt _ . “You don’t have to. But you’re smart, Jim. Hell, you’re a genius. You’re meant for more than working at some stupid docks doing manual labor. And you deserve to do something more for you, because  _ you  _ want to and because  _ you  _ can.”

          “What about the kids that died? What about all the other people who died? Don’t they deserve a chance too?” When Kora doesn’t answer, Jim looks back at her. She’s staring out of the door of the cubicle, at some far point between the glass window and the city lights. 

          “There is little rhyme or reason to who lives and who dies. But we shouldn’t throw away our lives because someone else had the misfortune of losing theirs.”

          “How can you, of all people, be so callous?” Jim hisses. Kora’s head snaps to his, and he can see her swallowing back words. Instead, she gets up, and pulls off her sweatshirt and pants to pull on a tight, short dress. She stands up outside of the cubicle, but pauses. She doesn’t meet Jim’s eyes when she looks back in. 

          “Would Sam want you to rot away in a shitty abandoned warehouse doing shitty jobs at some docks for people who don’t even bother to ask for your name?” Jim sucks in a breath, but Kora’s already disappeared down the hall. 

          She’s wrong, Jim tells himself. There were people far, far better than him who died on Tarsus.  _ They _ deserve to live, to learn, to actually be something. He doesn’t. But he can’t just sit and think, because that might lead him to the roof, and Jim’s not sure he wants to die. He doesn’t want to live, but to throw his life away seems too disrespectful to the people who did die. 

          So, he pulls on his tennis shoes that have had most of the color washed out by grey Seattle rains, and walks out. Kora isn’t anywhere to be seen up or down the street, but Jim’s not surprised. The girl has made being a ghost into an art even he couldn’t match. But that’s just how Koreva was, he mused as he started walking down the hill. She would hit you like a hurricane, rip everything apart and turn your world upside down, or she was a ghost who’d slip out of sight as soon as you caught her in the corner of your eye. 

          The clouds are hanging low enough that the yellow of the city lights reflects back off of them like a dirty yellow blanket a child pulls over their head. The store is locked, which doesn’t surprise Jim, but he figured trying the front door was better than not. 

          The back door handle is a little rusty, and jiggles when Jim yanks on it. The bobby pin in his pocket unlocks the old fashioned lock with little problem. A quick survey of the hallway reveals no anti-theft system. Of course there weren’t many of those in existence, and the ones that were used generally functioned only in places such as museums. 

          The selection of liquors is vast. Jim chooses the cheapest whiskey and the cheapest whine he can find, and puts them in a brown paper bag from behind the counter before leaving out the back door, locking the handle before shutting the door. The walk back to the warehouse is quiet, but when he walks in there’s three kids sitting on the concrete of the first floor. 

          “Hey, you’re the kid who lives with Koreva, right?” One of them yells. 

          “Yeah. What about it?” 

          “Nothin’. We just don’t see you much,” he tells Jim. The kid is a few years older, probably almost old enough that soon he’ll be a legal adult and people won’t ask him where his parents are when he applies for jobs and lists no address. 

          “What are you guys doing?” Jim demands. 

          “Burning off our fingerprints. I got a dermal regenerator, so we can burn off the skin and heal it over without getting a fingerprint back. Want to join?” The kid that answers Jim is younger than the first, but probably not much younger than Jim. Jim shrugs. 

          “Why not,” he mutters, but it’s more statement than question. The boys scoot over to make room for him. The kid currently holding the lighter keeps working on his fingers, showing them to the boy who invited Jim over for him to work with the dermal regenerator. 

          “Does the smell bother you?” The first speaker asks. Jim thinks of the crematoriums on Tarsus, the terrible smoke that poured out of their chimneys. This is nothing compared to that. Jim hadn’t even noticed the smell, not really anyways. 

          “No,” Jim says. 

          “I’m Zane,” the older boy introduces himself, “and this is Zeke,” he says while gesturing to the boy with the regenerator. The kid, Zeke, nods when Zane says his name. 

          “I’m Felix,” the kid who just burned his fingerprints off says. 

          “JT,” Jim tells them. 

          “Well, JT, let us extend a formal, if belated, welcome to the clubhouse,” Zane says. Jim feels something more feral and more twisted than a smile curl across his face. Zane hands him the lighter, and he flicks it on, holding the flame to his skin. And it hurts, and it stings, but Jim could live forever in the perfect clarity of pain, in the sudden clearness in his head, the sudden emptiness, the sudden quiet. It’s intoxicating and addictive, and Jim doesn’t want it to stop. Once he finishes with his first hand, he moves to his second, and it hurts to use his burned fingers to burn the others, but he doesn’t stop. 

          Jim lets Zeke use the regenerator on his fingers, but then he grabs the bag of alcohol and retreats to the sanctuary of their cubicle. The wine goes down fast. It’s too sweet, and stings a little when he gulps it down, but it goes down. 

          The whiskey, however, stings like a bitch when it goes down, and it sits funny in his stomach, but it does a lot more than the wine. Soon, the bottle wobbles on the way to his mouth and the rain isn’t streaking across the glass, but wavering on it. Or maybe it’s water in his eyes that’s wavering, and not the water on the glass. He’s not sure, but he doesn’t care. All he can think about is Sam. Sam promising him that  _ “I’ll be ok, Jimmy, just stay in the alley, ok? I’ll come back, just stay here,” _ but he didn’t come back. He left, just like Dad. Just like Mom. Just like Aunt Marie and Uncle Louis. Jim coughs with the next swallow of cheap whiskey,  and something warm slides down his cheeks. It’s tears. His head is pounding, and his stomach is rolling. If he doesn’t lay down, all of the alcohol is going to come back up all over the floor. He screw the cap back in the bottle, and lays down, and closing his eyes. 

          Jim is only vaguely aware of someone next to him, but he hears someone moving around, and he feels something pulled off of him. 

***

          The next morning, Jim would swear that cotton balls that had been soaked in street runoff had been stuffed into his mouth and dried there. When he opens his eyes, the grey light filtering in stabs painfully into his retinas. Jim squints his eyes and looks towards the entrance, only to notice a small, humanoid shaped lump curled up under the raty, plaid wool blanket that used to be covering the sleeping bag. 

          Kora isn’t next to him in the sleeping bag, but the raven black hair falling out of the braid onto the floor is definitely hers. 

          “Kora.” His voice is rough and scratchy, and comes out much quieter than Jim intended. He clears his throat. “Kora.” It comes out louder this time, and the girl rolls onto her back, throwing her arm over her eyes and sighing. 

          “What?” she whispers.  

          “You didn’t come to bed last night,” Jim whispers. She lets out a slow breath of air. Jim knows he didn’t finish the bottle of whiskey last night, that he wasn’t even close to being finished with it, but yet it sits empty next to the door. 

          “We don't have a bed. We have a sleeping bag,” Kora says. Jim huffs, laying on his back and closing his eyes. 

          “That’s not the point.” Jim had gotten used to Kora sleeping next to him, a solid warmth proving that he’s not alone, the gentle breathing of another person a gentle rhythm to copy when his body tears him awake in case the terrors of his nightmares have come alive in the real world. 

          “You were muttering in your sleep. I could feel it all. Even being in here was… a lot. And it was my fault.” Jim rolls onto his stomach and props his head up to look at her. Kora still hasn’t pulled her arm down off her eyes. 

          “I don’t remember what I dreamed about,” Jim starts, and stops trying to figure out how to phrase what he’s about to say in a way that Kora will understand and in a way that he doesn’t inadvertently lie to her. “When I dream, it’s flashbacks. It’s re-living almost anything from Tarsus to Frank. You talking about Sam may have brought up a certain chapter, but it’s all coming out of the same book, Koreva.” The girl finally drops her arm off of her face. 

          “Ok,” she whispers. Jim isn’t a betazoid, Jim is psy-null as most humans are, but even he can feel the guilt that is still pouring off of Koreva. 

          “I’m going to the library today,” he tells her. 

          “What book are you getting today?” She asks. 

          “I’m not getting a book. Well, not just. I’m going to hack into JT Wellcott’s records from Vulcan and transfer them over to Jim Kirk’s records. I think it’ll push me far enough along into school that I’ll have graduated and go straight into something more interesting than high school, probably further actually.” He hears Kora snort, watching the way her shoulders jerk. 

          “Watching grass grow is more interesting than highschool, Jimmy, everyone knows that.” Jim reaches over, and grabs her waist, hauling her up next to him, and pulling her closer. 

          “But we can sleep for a few more hours,” he says. She huffs into his shoulder, but wraps her arms around him anyway. 

          “Sounds good, JT,” she whispers. 

***

          “Happy birthday, Kora,” Jim whispers as he pulls his hands off Kora’s eyes so she can see the spread of blankets and a three candles on the single piece of cake. She whips around to look at Jim. The night isn’t even cloudy, a rare occasion in Seattle in late March. 

          “You made my fifteenth birthday something special for me, I figured I should return the favor,” Jim tells her, grining. Her lips curl up into a beaming smile, and she throws her arms around his neck. 

          “You, Mister Kirk, are positively wonderful,” she whispers before pressing her lips to his. 

***

          It happened somewhere between the latest hours of the night and earliest hours of the dawn, somewhere in the lightness of the silence, the gentle rhythm of some else’s breathing, the soothing healing of the darkness, that Jim decided he could live with this. He  _ wanted  _ to live with this, with the gentle ease that he and Kora slid together, the comfort they took with one another, the absence of sex and all it’s horrors, replaced with kisses and trust and intimacy and ‘I love yous’. 

          It happened somewhere in the dark eyes and black hair, in fingers tracing over ribs, in the impossible promises whispered in the dark. 

_           “You’ll stay?”  _

_           “I won’t leave, I promise.”  _

_           “What if we’re meant to fall apart?”  _

_           “We already did. We won’t let it happen again.”  _

_           “So you won’t leave?” _

_           “I’ll never leave, I promise,”  _ whispered over ribs holding down a bleeding, shattered heart. 

***

          One year. One whole year has passed since Jim dropped into Seattle and stumbled into the young woman grinning at him like the cat that caught the canary. 

          “Guess what?” She asks, flopping onto her stomach on the sleeping bag opposite him, bracing the tops of her feet against the wall. 

          “What?” Jim raises his eyebrows at her. 

          “Guess who got into the Dance Instructor Certification Program?” She asks, raising her eyebrows at Jim, who beams at her before leaning down over his engineering text book and kissing her. 

          “Congratulations, Kora,” he tells her. She keeps beaming at him. 

          “Thank you. How’s studying going?” Jim wrinkles his nose, and launches into telling  her about the calibration of thrusters for shuttles during takeoff and landing, and how each one has to be done individually when the shuttle comes in for a tune up because if you try to adjust them all at the same they all adjust at the same rate and while it calibrates properly for takeoff and landing, it gets screwed up when the shuttle is on autopilot. Kora has an almost dreamy look on her face, and Jim frowns at her. 

          “You haven’t been listening to a single word I’ve said,” He accuses her. 

          “Oh no, no I definitely have, it’s just I’ve only understood about thirty percent of the words you’ve said to me, but your eyes light up and you gesture with your hands more and you get very passionate about it, and it’s the fucking cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” she says. Jim snaps his mouth closed, and feels his cheeks heat up. 

          “Don’t worry,” Kora tells him, winking, “I won’t tell anyone that James T. Kirk is capable of being cute.” Jim just huffs in frustration. 

          “Well, I have finals coming up in February, and then after that I’ll graduate with my aerospace and mechanical engineering degrees,” Jim tells her. 

          “Fast tracking in Iowa and Vulcan did a hell of a lot for your college education,” Kora says. Jim snorts. 

          “I’m going to start looking for some engineering jobs,” he tells her, then suddenly pauses as the pieces click together. Kora is nodding in agreement with his statement, but stops when she sees him freeze. “You know what we should do?” Jim asks. 

          “What?” 

          “Well, we’re both about to be able to get full time jobs. We should get an apartment when we turn 16.” He watches Kora chew her lower lip. 

          “You can get an apartment,” she says. Jim frowns. 

          “Don’t you want to come?” 

          “Jim, I’m an alien,” she says. Jim opens his mouth to retort, but she beats him to it. “Not that kind of alien. I haven’t legally immigrated to Earth. My parents didn’t either so I have no citizenship through them. I can’t pay rent because I’m not a legal citizen. I can’t even file for emancipation when I turn sixteen because your planetary laws, with the exception of Intergalactic Peace Laws which don’t even have regulations for this, have no hold over me. If they find out, I’ll get kicked off the planet and into Betazed’s system. Even if I don’t get kicked off the planet before hand, I’d still have to go to Betazed’s embassy in San Francisco to file emancipation.” Jim feels his eyebrows raise. 

          “Oh,” he says. 

          “Yeah,” she nods. Jim tries to remember the immigration laws he’d heard about when he was moved onto Vulcan, and it’s admittedly not much. 

          “Oh!” Kora practically jumps at Jim’s loud outburst. “I know!” 

          “You know a lot of things, honey, be more specific,” she tells him. 

          “The surefire way to get anyone immigrated somewhere, is to marry them. I can get emancipated as soon as I turn sixteen on January fourth, You turn sixteen on March thirtieth, and by that time hopefully we’ll both have full-time jobs, so we can run down to San Francisco, get you emancipated, then run to the courthouse and get married. That way finances will be easier too, we can just pool all our money in one account, and pay for rent and groceries out of that instead of trying to figure out how to split everything.” Jim watches Kora open and close her mouth before he watches her start frowning. 

          “I think that’d actually work,” she tells him. Jim grins. 

          “I am a genius, as you’re always reminding me,” Jim tells her, and she gently smacks his knee with the back of her hand. 

          “I am not always reminding you of that,” she says, grinning at him. He watches her try to pull her lips into a straight line as he puts on his most serious face. 

          “Koreva Ochoi, will you marry me?” Jim asks. He watches Kora suck her lips in, holding her breath, and eventually bursting into a fit of giggles. 

          “I’m sorry,” she manages to gasp out. “Yes, I’ll marry you, you weirdo.”  Jim just grins at her as she keeps giggling, leaning her head forward to rest it on his knee. 

***

          Jim never realized how woefully unprepared for normal, civilized life he and Kora are until now.  

          “I guess it’s not normal to flinch when they hand you your ticket,” Kora whispers, wrapping her hands around his upper arm and trying to stifle her giggle in Jim’s shoulder. Jim snorts quietly. 

          “No, probably not,” he says, as he wraps his arm around her and squeezes her shoulder. 

          “It should be pretty flight. Get to see something other than the grungy streets of Seattle,” Jim snorts. 

          “Seattle’s not that bad.” Kora shrugs, and grins up at him. 

          “Maybe not. I like my job.” Jim grins at her. 

          “I know.” 

***

          Jim has never felt so out of place. It’s stupid to have forgotten, he knows, but still it’s a little startling to walk into an embassy because, well, it’s an embassy, and two everyone else had black eyes. Except him. He knows it’s stupid, but how he forgot that all Betazoids have black irises when he lives with one is beyond him. He’s sitting on a bench, waiting for Kora to finish the paperwork with the Betazoid officials. Everyone who passed him was speaking Betazed, if they were speaking at all. 

          Kora was practically vibrating with energy when she walked out, reaching her hand out to him. 

          “Let’s go get hitched, baby,” she tells him. Jim barks out a short laugh. “Just kidding. We have to wait until tomorrow for all the paperwork to be processed.” Jim takes her hand and lets her pull him up. “Seriously, JT, there’s so much damn paperwork.” Jim kisses her head. 

          “I know. It’s terrible isn’t it?” Jim tells her. She grins at him. 

          “Ice cream. Let’s go get ice cream.” Jim grins back, and happily follows her across the street. 

***

          The random couple that Jim and Kora pulled in to be their witness at the courthouse are far nicer than they expected. When they figured out that Jim and Kora didn’t have rings, the Denobulan couple was furious, and promptly ushered them to the closest jewelry store. Two simple silver rings and a nice Italian lunch with the couple later, Jim had taken Kora out to the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip gardens. 

          It was quiet and peaceful at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday in early April. 

          “It feels weird, you know,” Kora raises an eyebrow at him. 

          “Comforting when we just got married, JT,” she says. Jim huffs. 

          “That’s not what I meant. I like being  married to you. It was a way to get you immigrated, yes, but it doesn’t feel like that. I keep thinking of things as an ‘us’ and a ‘we’ and I like the idea of being married to you for you, not just to make you a legal citizen of this planet.” Kora has stopped walking, and now she wraps her arms around Jim, tilting her head up to look at him. 

          “James Tiberius Kirk, you are one hell of a human being.” Jim lets out a sharp bark of laughter, surprised by her sentence. “When I was little, I always found the idea of marriage repulsive. Mainly because it had been equated with sex, I assume. But either way, I hated the idea of it with anyone, regardless of species or gender. However, I like what we have, and I want to stay in it. I like you, and I like being able to walk around and look at some goddamn tulips, and in a few days we’re going to go back to Seattle and get an apartment and be so fucking domestic together it’s going to make you want to vomit and I cannot express to you how excited I am for it,” Kora tells him. Jim grins at her, and Kora promptly kisses him. 

***

          Renting an apartment is equal parts far more civil and far less civil than Jim expected it to be. Three and a half weeks after their return to Seattle, Jim and Kora officially moved into the new apartment with the few belongings they had. 

          Jim watches with extreme amusement as his wife, (and that will never get old, looking at this amazing woman in front of him and knowing that her citizenship on earth was only a secondary thought when she agreed to marry him) bends over, hands on her knees, trying to regain the ability to breath after putting their clothes away in the walk in closet, and realizing that, between the two of them, they had seven shirts, six pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks and four miscaleanous ones, three pairs of shoes, and two sweatshirts. Jim can’t help but join her laughter at the absolute absurdity of the suition, two sixteen year olds, married and renting an apartment, with the only thing they own beside their clothes is a sleeping bag, a ratty blanket, and a battery operated lantern. 

          “Ok, I’m done, I swear,” Kora gasps out. Jim can barely get his grin under control enough to respond to her. 

          “You’ve said that at least twice, Misses Kirk,” and Kora just grins at him, her features softening slightly around the tears of laughter that have streaked across her flushed cheeks. 

          “Maybe,” she shrugs, leaning up on her tippy toes to press a kiss to his mouth. 

          “We should go get some food though. The apartment may have come furnished, but they didn’t stock the cupboards. Also, we need sheets.” Jim grins, and walks out to the living room with her. 

          “None of those weird ass silky ones though. Only soft, fuzzy ones,” Jim tells her. Kora rolls her eyes. 

          “Whatever you say, baby.” Jim just snorts at her. Both teenagers almost jump out of their skin at the knock on the door. Kora just shrugs and walks over, flinging the door open. 

          “Hi! Oh my god, you’re babies!” The older woman on the other side of the door exclaims. 

          “Renting an apartment, being married, and my husband having two bachelor’s degrees would beg to differ, but hi,” Kora says. Jim is, once again, amazed and thankful for Kora’s ability to barge through any socially awkward settings with a smile, and those charming dark eyes. 

          “I’m sorry. That was so impolite. The land lord had said a married couple was moving in, and I just assumed you would be older. I’m sorry. I brought you a housewarming basket.” Jim feels his eyebrows raise as he walks up behind Kora. 

          “Basket?” He asks. 

          “Of course!” The older woman raises her arms slightly, and draws their attention to the basket she has in her arms. “I’m Maggie Stavish, by the way. I live across the way.” Kora opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. 

          “Basket?” She quietly whispers, and Jim lets out a shaky laugh. 

          “I’m Jim Kirk, and this is my wife, Kora.” Kora seems to snap out of her momentary speechlessness and smiles at the woman. 

          “You’ll have to excuse us, Ma’am. We got married about a month ago, and with both of our families being…” she pauses and Jim brushes his hand across her back, “dead, we just weren’t expecting anything as kind as this, especially from a stranger. Come on in,” Kora says, stepping back.  

          “Oh, you poor darlings. I’m sorry,” Maggie says as Kora ushers her into the apartment. Jim shrugs. 

          “It happened a long time ago,” he says. 

          “Well, I’m sorry regardless,” Maggie tells them as she sets the basket on the kitchen counter. 

          “I would offer you something to eat, but we haven’t had the chance to go grocery shopping yet,” Kora tells the older woman. Maggie just scoffs and waves her hand. 

          “Nonsense, darling. You’re the new neighbors, it’s my privilege to welcome you in, not have you feed me. That being said, welcome to the building, I live just across the hall, and don’t be strangers,” She says, grinning. 

          “Thank you,” Jim tells her. She says her goodbyes, and whisks out the door with the same gusto she burst in with. Kora and Jim turn to look at each other. 

          “So, groceries?” Jim asks. 

***

          If Jim was honest with himself, which starting to happen with a frightening regularity, he would have said he thought Kora was dealing Tarsus and their dramatic shift in social status far better than he.

          Of course, it made sense that she wasn’t. She never would have gotten the healing or the training after Tarsus to rebuild her shields. She would be living in a constant storm of terrible, dramatic, and exhausting human emotion. Of course she wouldn’t be ok. 

          Which was how Jim found her, terribly and horribly not ok, curled up in the old tattered blanket they brought with them from the warehouse on the couch that sat on their balcony. He had seen her sitting outside through the french doors when he had gotten up to look for her. It was usually him fleeing their bed and all the nightmares sleep brings at three seventeen in the morning, not her. 

          Jim had made tea, because that is something they have ready access to now, and held one of the cups out to her. She smiles as she takes it. Jim feels something like guilt twist in his side. 

          “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

          “For what?” She asks, leaning into his side as Jim sits down. 

          “Assuming you were ok.” Kora snorts quietly and lets him put his arm around her shoulders. 

          “We’re never going to be ok. Not in the way the world expects us to be. And it sucks and it’s terrible, but we know how to survive and we’re learning how to function, and eventually, we’ll learn how to live in our way.”

          “We are living,” he tells her. Jim feels her shake her head where it’s resting on her shoulder. 

          “No, we’re not. We’re surviving. We’re learning how to function but we’re not living,” she whispers. Jim’s not sure he understands what she’s trying to say. They have an apartment, jobs, they’re married, this is living. But he can feel the tension slowly running out of Kora’s body, so he doesn’t say anything. 

***

          If Kora is honest with herself, which she finds herself being far too often for comfort, she knew long before now that Maggie from across the hall was now, officially, the one friend that she and Jim have. It had been obvious, really, in the dinners she invited them over for, and the amount of time she seemed to spend with them, simply enjoying their company. 

          If Kora couldn’t feel it, she would have assumed that Maggie felt obligated to spend time with them. But she didn’t and so that was how on a rare sunny Saturday, she and Jim ended up on a double date with Maggie and her new boyfriend. 

          It was, quite possibly, the most awkward date she’d ever been a part of or witness to. So after Maggie’s date insisted on taking couples photos of her and Jim, it ended rather quickly. Two weeks later, Maggie dropped of a package of framed photos from the day. A horribly awkward date, but the photos would make lovely Christmas presents for Jim she decided. 


	5. The sun ran out on a cold October

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING:  
> There is cutting and self harm in the chapter. If that's a trigger for you, don't read it. Self harm will continue to be a theme in the book so if that's a big trigger for you please don't read it. Also, if you feel like self harming please please don't. Come email me or go for a walk or something else. my email is ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly@gmail.com
> 
> Also, comments and kudos are the best thing I have ever received. Please give me some love lol
> 
> EDIT: There is a serious compilation of issues (suffering mental health, working full time, and school to name a few) that are impeding progress on this story, but know I am obsessiong over it pretty much all the time. That being said, I've had several people say they'd beta for me, and then just. not. for various reasons, so if you'd be interested email me at ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly@gmail.com or come find me on tumblr here: https://ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly.tumblr.com/ and let me know :)

The moonlight holds a strange silver quality to it when it spills into the bedroom. Maybe it’s the cold weather of late fall, but it’s something that never quite makes sense to her. Kora decides it’s psychosomatic and not actually because the moonlight looks any more silver coming through the bedroom window.

Regardless as to the origin of the silvery moon light, it always casts shadows over the dips and valleys and plains on Jim’s back. It helps to ground her when she’s had a nightmare. His skin is soft, marred by scars that feel smooth if a little bumpy, under her finger tips. She doesn’t know explicitly what they’re from, but she knows that some are from Tarsus, and some are older. It isn’t hard to connect the dots between the old scars and Frank, but she never asks. If Jim wants to tell her, he will.

It isn’t fair, she thinks, that she’s having as hard of a time with Tarsus as Jim is. Jim already had all of the trauma before Tarsus, having to deal with being the Kelvin Baby and the fact that to his mother, he’s just the tortured ghost of his father, and the abuse from his step-father. And then Tarsus happened.

Kora runs her finger across the biggest scar, a horrible raised and ragged thing running from his right shoulder to his left hip.  It sits on top of all of the other scars. It must be one the last ones from Tarsus.

There’s something strange about tracing the scars, something that blooms in Kora’s chest, running through her lungs, curling around her heart, and twisting down the arteries.. Maybe it’s because she’s pretty sure she’s the only one to ever get to do it, the only one who took the time to care and see them as more than something terrible and ugly; something more than a picture of past trauma locked behind blue eyes and a smirk.

Kora can feel the gentle sparks and buzz of Jim slowly rolling into consciousness.

“You always do that,” his voice is rough from sleep, and he doesn’t bother to open his eyes. She makes a noise of acknowledgement. “Why?” Kora has to stop and think.

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “Because I find it grounding, maybe?” Jim snorts, and it makes Kora jump.

“You find scars grounding?”

“Yeah. It makes it seem real. Like I’m not going crazy. It’s sick and twisted…” Kora gets cut off when Jim gently presses his hand over her mouth.

“You don’t need to explain yourself,” Jim whispers, finally opening his eyes. Kora stares into the pools of midnight, startled as always by how dark Jim’s eyes get.

“What if I want to?”

“Then I’m always listening.” Kora runs her fingers through his.

“Sometimes it feels like it’s not real. Like the Federation is gaslighting me with their regenerators, covering the bruises and cuts and scars. I woke up from a coma with a clean slate on my body. Nothing to show that Tarsus was real. They could have told me it was some weird anesthesia related dream, and I didn’t have anything to use to prove them otherwise. Sometimes I still feel like it is that dream, like I’m watching everything as if it’s some sort of sick and twisted movie, and my fingers and toes go numb, and my body doesn’t feel like it’s mine. Seeing these on you remind me that it is real. That even though my body doesn’t show it, there are scars hiding under all the smooth skin.” She pauses and Jim waits as her fingers trace softly over the skin.

“They remind me that you’re real,” she eventually continues right when Jim had decided she wouldn’t, “and you love me, and that you’re not going anyway. I feel horrible romanticizing something so, so terrible, but I can’t stop,” she whispers.

“Kora, months ago you told me that we’re never going to be ok in the way society expects us to be, but we’re also not going to be ok the way that we want to be. There’s no road map, or directions for what we’re supposed to do with this, how we’re supposed to heal. And we're not going to heal in straight lines and clean edges, but that’s life. If this is what helps you heal, then you use it and you heal.” Kora drops her eyes to the sheet between them, before looking back into the midnight trapped in her husband’s eyes.

“What helps you heal, Jim?”

***

“Happy anniversary, Jim.” Kora tastes like the chocolate cake they just ate as she kisses him, and Jim can feel her smile as he kisses her. “We’re both eighteen. We’ve been married for two years, isn’t that weird?” Kora mutters against his jaw. Jim just huffs a laugh into her hair.

“Awesome. Strange. Weird. Yeah, that sounds about right,” Jim huffs back.

***

Jim knows something is wrong the minute Kora gets back from work. She had practiced with her performance group earlier that day, and then moved on to teach her two ballet classes, she should be smiling and practically vibrating with excitement. But she’s not. It’s like there’s suddenly a ghost where Kora used to be.

“What’s wrong?” Jim asks, running his hands down her arms. She just shakes her head, leaning into his chest. Jim gently runs his fingers down the inside of her right arm, tracing over the skin, feeling the goose bumps rise in the wake of his fingers. His fingers brush over the inside of her wrist, feeling the fragile skin, the tendons underneath, the blood pushing stubbornly through her veins.

“Dance with me,” Jim whispers as he tangles his fingers into hers. Kora tightens her fingers in his, and wraps her arm around his waist. They sway slowly in the kitchen, Kora hiding her face in Jim’s shoulder.

“I wish that for one day, just one fucking day, I could have my shields back,” she hisses, and Jim can hear the thickness in her voice, the salt water rusting the iron.

“I’m sorry, Kora,” he whispers. She shakes her head, and lets out a huff of frustration.

“You don’t know what he was doing to her. Nobody fucking did.” Jim knows what Kora means but it still doesn’t quite make it through the haze of disgust and hoping that he misunderstands her.

“Kora…”

“I reported that fucker that the poor girl calls a father to the police.”

“Good,” Jim tells her.

***

If Jim had just told his boss he had to go home, and couldn’t stay the extra hour and a half, maybe there wouldn’t be blood on the walls.

If Jim hadn’t stopped to ask the single mom if she wanted help carrying her groceries, maybe she would have still been breathing.

If Jim hadn’t missed his bus because of asking the woman if she wanted help, there wouldn’t be blood all over his hands.

Maybe, if he hadn’t gotten so comfortable in their life of domesticity, he wouldn’t be sitting next to Maggie in a hospital waiting room, shivering like an icy wind is slicing through his body. Maybe he wouldn’t be staring at his hands, stained pink from a hasty wash of the blood, trying not to throw up on the floor.

He will be seeing Kora’s bloody, tortured body for the rest of his life. The knife wounds across her chest and abdomen, the blood pooling around her, those dark eyes closed. Maggie doesn’t say anything, just sits next to him. Maybe it’s because she’s in shock just as much as him. Maybe it’s because she knows that nothing she says will register.

“Mister Kirk?” Jim looks up at his name, to see a detective standing in front of him. “May I have a few minutes?” Jim nods and the officer gestures for him to get up and follow. Jim shakes his head.

“She can hear whatever it is you have to say.” The Detective nods.

“I’m Detective Kaito Cho. I’m here to tell you we caught your wife’s attacker.”

“Who?” Jim asks. The detective sits down across from him, and sighs.

“Matthew Franco. Your wife had reported him for abuse of his daughter. We believe that’s why he came after her.” Jim just lets his gaze drop to the floor. He can’t feel his feet pressing into it. He can’t feel it when he runs his fingers through his hair.

“Thank you, Detective. I think that’s all for now,” Maggie says quietly. Jim doesn't hear him leave, or if he says anything else. Maggie just shifts a little closer to him, but doesn't try to hug him. Jim is grateful, but he cannot express it. He isn’t sure how.

***

He doesn’t know how long it’s been. But he does know that his mouth is filled with cotton, and the world doesn't feel solid under his feet as he stands when the doctor comes out. He knows what the man is going to say even before he says it.

Jim tries to listen, he really does, but he only catches snippets. “Lost more than forty percent of her blood,” Jim takes a breath in. “Hypovolemic shock,” he breathes out. “Respiratory failure for almost five minutes, catastrophic internal trauma,” Jim breathes in. “I’m sorry. There wasn’t anything we could do.”

The hospital walls are a beige color. Lighter than Vulcan’s sands, lighter than the dust that would rise as he drove the tractors on the family farm. The ceiling is white, and reflects the lights onto the tile floors. There are beiges and browns in the tiles. None of the chips of color are red enough to match Vulcan’s sands.

“This way, Jim,” He feels fingers hooking into the crook of his elbow. Gentle and soft, easy to simply walk away from. He follows the fingers back to the hand, up the arm covered in maroon fabric, and to the soft hazel eyes with crows feet spreading from the corners. “The exit is this way.” The voice that comes out of the face is as soft as the gentle touch on his arm. He nods slowly, and lets her lead him out of the hospital.

***

Jim has a sudden realization as he’s sitting in Maggie’s kitchen at four in the morning, staring into an empty coffee mug after forgetting that he started to brew coffee (the ground beans are in the maker, but there isn’t any water and the lid isn’t closed). Jim can’t function, he knows that. He doesn’t even know how many days have passed since Kora died. He also doesn’t know who got the chain that Kora’s wedding ring now hangs on, but he wears it around his neck anyway.

Jim has the terrible revelation that this must be what his mother felt like after George died. This emptiness. The inability to function, the complete loss of the knowledge of how to _function_. It curls somewhere in his stomach, and it feels sick, slowly spreading through him. Jim decides he will call his mother later, once the sun has risen. Winona had practically abandoned him, and Jim wasn’t naive enough to hope that she would love him, but he does hope that she wishes he didn’t know how she felt after George’s death at nineteen years old.

Maggie is quiet as she comes into the kitchen, but loud enough that she doesn’t startle him. He watches as she sets down a stack of somethings on the counter. He can’t make out what they are, but she pour water in the coffee maker, and presses the button to start the brewing process.

“Kora was an amazing woman,” Maggie stars, looking out the window instead of at Jim. “She was whip smart, caught on to subjects like crazy. And even if she didn’t quite get it, if you enjoyed talking about, she enjoyed listening.” Her teeth flash white against the dark of her skin in the light of the street lamp. It’s the only light in the apartment. “But sometimes she would simply trail off mid sentence. Or stop in the middle of a laugh. And there were fractures in her eyes whenever she thought no one was looking. I don’t know what horrors her past contained. I don’t know the horrors your past contains either. I know it’s something bad. I never asked, and Kora never volunteered. But whatever demons she faced, whatever nightmares she endured, you made her happy. She loved you.” Jim clenches his jaw, glaring at the counter with eyes wide open hoping it will stop the tears from falling.

It’s quite in the apartment. The sound of two people breathing is the only sound, but somehow it fills all the corners and nooks and crannies. Jim watches as Maggie grabs the short stack of items, and sets them on the breakfast bar where Jim is leaning.

“She left these here because they were presents for you, and she didn’t want you to find them yet. The bottom one isn’t complete.” Maggie taps the counter twice, and then walks back down the hall to her bed room. Jim’s hands shake as he picks up the first item. It’s a picture, he realizes, an actual paper picture in a frame from the weird double date he and Kora went on with Maggie and the photographer. Kora has jumped on his back, hair falling over her right shoulder, and has wrapped her arms around his shoulders. You can see the silver of her wedding ring against the black of his shirt. Jim has reached up to grab her arms, and his wedding rings stands out too. He has a smile on, just like Kora. Jim feels like he’s looking at a wedding stock photo. He doesn’t know these people, not anymore.

The next one is also a framed picture. In this one, Kora has her forehead resting against his, face scrunched up, halfway through a laugh, her hands hooked under his arms to hold onto his shoulders. He has his hands cupping her jaw, grinning at her like she’s his entire world. And it makes something in the left side of his chest _hurt_. Terrible, horrible agony that burns out through his veins, into his lungs, setting every breath of oxygenated air into another burst of flames. It forces itself out in salt water from his eyes since it cannot crawl out of his skin.

Jim presses his face into the crook of his elbow, and shoves his fist in his mouth to stifle the sobs. Koreva Ochoi-Kirk had survived Tarsus. She had survived her shields being destroyed. She had survived them never being repaired. She had survived on the streets of Seattle for years. Koreva Ochoi-Kirk was killed in her home, and it was her _home_ and god didn’t that hurt, protecting a girl who couldn’t protect herself. Jim slaps his hand over his mouth and screams into it, rocking on the stool, biting his hand as he sucks in air around it.

Once his throat burns instead of his lungs, and he’s wiped the majority of his tears off with the sleeves of his shirt, he looks at the last item. It’s an old leather journal, held closed by a long leather strap wrapped around it several times. His hands shake as he opens it.

 _Tips and Tricks for Feeling Alive When You’re Sure You’re Dead_ is written in Kora’s neat writing across the top of the first page. Jim takes a deep breath, and holds it deep in his lungs, and begins reading the list.

 

  * __Find a concert, or bar, where the music is so loud you can feel it pounding in your chest. Pretend it’s your heartbeat.__


  * _Lay on your back in the grass, feel the pulse in your stomach._


  * _Go to the ocean, and stand in the waves. Feel the cold, and recognize that dead bodies are already cold, they don’t feel it._



 

Jim slaps the journal closed, squeezing his eyes shut. The journal feels solid where he’s clamped his hands around it.

“This isn’t happening,” he whispers to the empty room. He’s still a widow at nineteen when he opens his eyes. Spock would have died before the paramedics had even gotten to him, almost instantly actually, he realizes because one of the stab wounds had perforated Kora’s liver, right where Spock’s Vulcan heart sits. Jim stares at the coffee pot across from him, and slowly devolves into hysterical laughter and the ridiculousness of the thought. There is no world in which Spock would agree to marry him, and he’s thinking about how the Vulcan that he loved would have died faster than his wife. Hell, Jim knows Spock wouldn’t have even made it to the hospital, which sends him into another peal of hysterics.

Jim stops half way through the laughter, the smile freezing on his face like someone carved it on. It slowly melts off. Jim pulls the frames open, and takes the pictures out, tucking them into the front of the leather journal, and tying it closed again. He looks at the chronometer on the wall. It says October thirteenth. He thinks back with the sudden clarity that his round of hysterics has lent him. Four days. Koreva Kirk died on October ninth.

***

It’s a strange emotional detachment Jim feels as he looks at his mother through the vidcom screen. She’s still in her engineering reds, and her commander stripes flash in the light of her cabin every time she pushes back a stray piece of hair.

“I thought you were on Vulcan,” she says. Jim shrugs.

“I left Vulan almost five years ago, Mom.” The word ‘Mom’ sounds foreign to his ears, and clumsy on his tongue. He hasn’t used it since before he left for Tarsus, so that’s probably part of his problem. Winona flinches.

“Why did you call, Jimmy?” She sounds tired, Jim decides.

“Because I know how you felt after George died,” he tells her. Winona scoffs.

“Sure, Jimmy, sure.” Jim feels anger flash across his eyes.

“Would you like for me to send you the coroner’s report on my wife’s death? Or would you like me to summarize it right now? Or how about both, Mom? Cause I can still remember all 17 stab wounds on her body. She wasn’t breathing when EMS got there. She got an emergency beam straight to the trauma room. She lost over forty percent of her blood, Mom. I found her lying in the middle of our living room. And you wanna know why? Cause she reported an abusive asshole of a father to the police and he got pissed that his little seven year old punching bag got taken away.” Jim feels his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm as his mother stares at him, mouth open.

“I’m sorry, Jim,” she eventually whispers. Jim nods sharply.

“I know. Everyone is always fucking sorry. But I just wanted to tell you that I get it. I get why you’re the way you are, why you took one look at me and ran for the stars. I don’t forgive you, not yet and maybe not ever, but I get it.” Jim watches as Winona covers her mouth with her hand, turning her face away from the screen. He hears her take a deep, shaky breath. Her eyes are shimmering when she looks back at him.

“I’m not asking for a second chance. I know I don’t deserve one, and your need for a mother has passed. You are alive and functioning. Probably not well, but you’re functioning. So I’m not going to ask for a chance to be your mother. But I will take the tiny possibility that you’ll forgive me and ask for a chance to be your friend.” Jim looks at his mother, the pale blue of her eyes so light they look grey, the frown lines that are far more pronounced than laugh lines, the black circles under eyes, and they way her cheeks are slightly sunken in.

“Sure, Mom. That sounds fine.” The corners of her mouth twitch, as if her body is trying to remember how to smile.

“Good.”

***

He’s honestly not sure who started the fight. It could have been him. It could have been the guy he got brought in with. It could have been someone else entirely. Jim isn’t sure, and he doesn’t care. _Methamphetamines really screw with your priorities,_ he tells himself. But god, it was fun. He should ask the police man where, exactly, he is because ‘somewhere in fucking Nevada’ isn’t specific enough, he was told.

“Get up, kid,” the officer says. Jim grins as he rolls to sit up. The man is probably as old as his Mom.

“Come on,” the officer tells him, gesturing for Jim to walk in front of him. Jim does and lets himself be led into an interrogation room.

“You’re lucky that the guy doesn’t want to press charges.” Jim just grins at the officer and feels the split in his lip crack open again.

“Aren’t you gonna say anything, kid?” The officer asks. Jim just flicks his tongue over the split in his lip.

“Should I be saying something? I can think of better ways I can use my mouth, Officer,” Jim leers at him. It makes something twist in his stomach and he can’t tell if it’s anticipation or disgust. The officer’s face twists with what Jim is sure is disgust. “Come on. You’re getting out tonight.” Jim just keeps the twisted smile on his face.

***

Jim is surprised the dinner is open. It’s late, he’s not sure how late because the chronometer in the old truck he won in a poker game is broken, but it’s late enough that the sky is dark and the Milky Way is rising over the mountains, glinting off the white snow gracing their peaks.

There’s a bell that jingles as the door opens, and again as it closes. Aside from himself, the restaurant is empty.

“Who are you?” The voice comes from a child who Jim assumes must be no older than eight.

“I’m Jim. I just want some dinner,” he tells the kid.

“We’re closed.” The kid scowls at him, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Is there somewhere close by that’s open?” The kid keeps glaring at him, as if she’s trying to decide if she wants to tell him or not.

“Kiara, be nice!” Jim looks up to see a frazzled looking woman coming out from where he assumes the kitchen must be. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes. Jim smiles at her.

“No need to apologize. I’m just looking for something to eat.”

“There isn’t going to be much open this time of night. Probably just the convenience store on the corner.” Jim smiles at the woman.

“That’s just fine.”

“Sorry we couldn’t be more helpful.” Jim just shrugs.

“Nothin’ for you to help with.” Jim gives them one last smile as he walks out the door. The convenience store is a block away. His nose is red and fingers are blue by the time he makes it to the store. Winter is sliding into the valley, settling in with no intention of letting go.

“You’re new.” The kid behind the counter looks surprised at the words that just came out of his mouth. Jim just raises his eyebrow.

“Is that a problem?” The kid behind the counter watches as he walks over to the small grocery section.

“No. Just a surprise. Most of the tourists have left.”

“I’m not a tourist,” Jim tells him. Jim can practically feel the kid raise his eyebrow.

“So what are you?” The kid isn’t really much of a kid, Jim notes as he walks towards the counter. He’s probably as old as Jim is. Maybe a little older. But he smiles at Jim over the counter, and there’s something innocent in those green eyes that Jim knows his don’t hold anymore, and when the kid tells Jim that his shift is over in seven minutes, Jim accepts his offer and fucks the kid in a barn loft.

***

“I don’t do repeats,” Jim tells the kid. The kid, Wyatt, just shrugs.

“Ok.”

***

Two days later, Jim fucks Wyatt over his couch.

“I thought you didn’t do repeats,” Wyatt gasps out, trying to regain a regular pattern of breathing. Jim just shrugs.

“I’m not staying. I just need enough money to buy the parts to fix the motor in my truck.” Wyatt flicks his tongue across his lower lip.

“You’re an interesting person, Jim,” he says. Jim just leers at him.

“Baby, I’m not interesting,” he says as he pulls his pants back on.

“All the scars on your skin tells another story,” Wyatt says. Jim whips around, a snarl on his lips.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll pretend that they aren’t there,” he growls. Wyatt’s eyes are wider.

“Ok, I’m sorry,” he says, holding up his hands. Jim narrows his eyes, but pulls on his sweatshirt without saying anything else. “I know Madeline asked you to chop wood for her. Want some help?” Wyatt offers. Jim grins at him.

“Sure,” he says.

***

“I have a question for you,” Wyatt says as Jim has his dick all the way in Wyatt’s ass.

“Right now?” The green eyed boy gently catches Jim’s chin.

“Who taught you that love and violence were the same thing?” Jim just pulls out, flips Wyatt over, and fucks him hard into the mattress. He never answers, but it doesn’t matter because he gets the parts and fixes the truck’s engine the next morning.

Jim has left the tiny town of Saint Mary, Montana before the sun has passed its zenith.

***

“I didn’t think you’d come meet me.” Jim looks at the woman standing next to him.

“A free meal is a free meal, Mom.” Winona snorts as they walk through San Francisco.

“That’s not the point, Jim,” she tells him. He shrugs.

“I offered you a chance to be my friend. This is a test run. I can walk away at any point in time.” He stops when Winona does, tipping her chin up to look up at him.

“I sent you to Vulcan without having you change your name back to Kirk or even coming to see you. Do you know why?” Jim shakes his head.

“I didn’t want to look at you and have to acknowledge that you were a stranger to me. If I let you keep Frank’s name, let you go to T’Lanna and Savek, then I could pretend that you were a stranger, and maybe it would hurt a little less to think about how completely I failed you.” Jim clenches his jaw, and Winona claps him on the shoulder.

“Come on. I’m hungry,” she says. Jim nods and keeps walking, following her to the restaurant. During dinner their conversation sticks to warp cores and engine parts. Neither want to acknowledge that it’s an effective way of hiding the complicated tangle of feelings and history that they have between them.

It’s a slow walk towards San Francisco Bay when they’re done, more like a meander.

“Y’know, the old house in Iowa doesn’t have anyone living in it,” Winona tells him. Jim frowns.

“It doesn’t?” Winona shakes her head, blond hair much lighter than Jim’s scattering across her shoulders.

“No. Frank moved out a few days after you left for Vulcan.” Jim stops his mother with a hand on her elbow. He doesn’t miss the spark of something in her eye.

“What happened Mom?” She grins slowly at him.

“I’m not stupid, Jimmy. I came back, the corvette was destroyed, you were heading to Vulcan, and Sam was dead after he had tried to run away. No one gets away with hurting my babies. No one,” she says. Jim feels his eyes widen, and his fingers tighten on his mother’s elbow.

“Mom, did you kill him?” Winona laughs then. It hits somewhere deep in Jim’s chest, and he’s not sure if it hurts or not.

“God, no. I just broke his jaw.” Jim raises an eyebrow at her. “And, you know, seventeen other bones, but it’s ok. He left.” Jim just grins and shakes his head at his mother.

“That’s crazy,” he says. Winona shrugs, and they continue their slow walk back towards Winona’s temporary home in Starfleet’s dirtside housing.

“Why are you telling me this?” He asks her. She stops and looks at him, and Jim realizes that his mother looks far older than she is.

“I’m never going to do anything with it, so by default that makes it your house. Do what you will with it.”

“So you wouldn’t care if I burned it down?” Winona turns her face towards the bay, and Jim sees her close her eyes.

“Maybe it would be good for both of us if you did. Maybe it would help exorcise some of the demons we both carry.” Jim tilts his face into the ocean breeze.

“Maybe,” he says. Winona claps him on the shoulder when they say goodbye. Jim is infinitely relieved that she didn’t try to hug him.

***

Jim alternates between staring at the bay, the flickering lights across it cast by Starfleet Academy, and the burning end of his cigarette. He wonders what his mom would say if she knew he was smoking. He thinks that maybe he’ll ask her next time they talk.

The house in Iowa, like his mother said, holds a lot of demons. A lot of bad memories that all taste like poison in his mouth. He inhales more of the cigarette, holding the smoke in his mouth before letting it out with a long exhale. It gets swept away by the ocean breeze.

After finishing two more cigarettes, Jim shoves off from where he was leaning on the rail to walk back to his truck. Once there, he starts the long drive east. If nothing else, the house in Iowa will give him a good place to drink booze.

***

Jim never remembered the color of the house. It had never seemed important, and it got forgotten somewhere between entering orbit over Tarsus and the first gunshots going off. It was everything else that he remembered.

The top step on the porch was the one that creaked the loudest. The wood started shrinking in the winter, and the scratch marks the door make when the wood swelled in the summer became visible, and the hinges stopped creating..

The couch still smells slightly dusty, and the sun light always hits the fridge just right at eight seventeen in the morning to bounce off and shine directly in the eyes of who ever had decided to sit at the lone bar stool to drink coffee and look at the corn fields and scattered trees behind the house.

If he stands still at the bottom of the stairs for long enough, he can still hear the wind rushing through the attic. Jim wonders if it’s as loud in his room as he remembers it, or if the house has tainted the memory with the ghost of his father and the echoing hole where his mother should have been.

The really interesting part, though, is the barn. The cover that sat over the corvette is still laying on the ground. Nothing has changed, nothing has moved since he drove the car over the cliff. It makes something crawl under his skin. Something dark, and dangerous. Something he normally would bury in the warmth of his wife sleeping next to him.

Jim turns and stalks back to the house, slamming the door closed behind him. The stairs creak as he walks up stairs, and the pipes hiss before spitting out water as her turns the shower on. The water is hot on his skin, but Jim just drops his head forward and lets it pound against his back.

***

It didn’t hurt nearly as much as Jim had thought it would. But there is a lot of blood all over the toilet seat and the inside of his legs. Jim feels the blade slipping, but he lets it go, and listens to it fall onto the ground.

 _“This won't work, JT,”_ Kora’s voice whispers.

“I know,” he says to the ghosts that live in the house.

_“Making yourself bleed won’t wash off all the blood everyone else left on you.”_

“It might.”

***

Admittedly, getting arrest wasn’t what Jim had planned. He honestly he had fully intended to go out, get shit faced drunk, and then pass out in an alley somewhere.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t how it went, and now the entire left side of his face is probably going to turn black and blue and for some reason unknown to him the sheriff had decided that Jim sitting at her table in her mobile home watching her make chili would serve him better than a night in a holding cell.

“I’m still not sure how this is supposed to help,” Jim asks, tilting his head.

“Who said it was supposed to help?” The sheriff says, not bothering to look over her shoulder at him.

“What makes you think I’m not going to run?”

“If you’re going to, why haven’t you done it?” She challenges. Jim frowns, staring at the handcuffs he’s still wearing. The door is unlocked, he knows that she didn’t lock it, and his hands are cuffed in front of him. He could run. If he wanted to. And he does want to, he tells himself.

“Anything dramatic you’re allergic to food-wise I should be aware of?” The sheriff, Sasha Rothery asks him. Jim shrugs.

“Paprika. That’s probably the most relevant.” Jim would be lying if he said he didn’t want to run now. But it was warm, and there was food and something definitely felt _wrong_ but not dangerous. Not yet.

“What do you want from me, Sheriff?” He asks her.

“I want you to stop getting arrest. Not everyone thinks your face is pretty and wants to see it.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “And you’re in my house, it’s Sasha.”

“I’m in handcuffs and you were the one who brought me here,” Jim counters. Sasha shrugs as she turns back to the simmering pot. The smell of the chili is wafting over the kitchen now, and Jim realizes it’s been at least a day since he’s eaten.

“Mild, medium or hot?”

“Whatcha referring to Sheriff? Cause I tend to like it hot.” Jim winks at her, and is confused when her only response is a long-suffering sigh.

“Mild it is,” she says.

“Wait, wait, if it’s salsa I want hot. Hot salsa,” Jim says. Even though her back is turned to him, he can feel her roll her eyes.

“I gotta ask kid,” she says as she turns around with steaming bowls of chili, “do you hate your dad?”

“What?”

“George Kirk. Do you hate him?” Jim stares at her with mild shock. People have asked him many things about his father, but this has never been one of them.

“I don’t know. I never really think about it. He’s pretty much a stranger.” Sasha stares at him for half a second, trying to find what Jim doesn’t know, and then shrugs.

“Ok,” she says and reaches uncross the table to unlock his handcuffs before going back to the chili, spooning some up and blowing on it like she regularly brings twenty-year-old repeat offenders into her kitchen and feeds them.

Jim can’t decide if the chili is that good, or if it’s been too long since he ate. Either way, her question about his dad bothers him. George Kirk is one of the topics that Jim does his very best to not think about and avoid, right up there with Spock and Tarsus.  

Because really, Jim doesn’t hate George himself. He hates what George did. George left him with an absentee mother. He left him with a brother who couldn’t deal with life. George left him to be left by his mother with an abusive step father. George Kirk was a good man, who made a decision that ruined three lives.

“I don’t hate my father.” Sasha simply nods. He can’t decide if that makes it weird enough to run, but the chili is good and Jim isn’t sure enough of Sasha not tazing him to try it.

***

Jim had heard about seasonal depression. Read plenty of papers and articles on it, too. So when snow finally hit Iowa and the trees out the kitchen window became black skeletons on a perfectly white canvas, it took Jim a lot longer than he would like to admit that seasonal depression had officially settled in on him, curling somewhere deep in his chest and wrapping up his spine and around his heart.

It was a fascinating study of the human psyche, he decided, that the only thing that could curb his self destructive tendencies for any length of time greater than a week or so was the absolute and utter exhaustion that came from the very same root that created the desire to self destruct anyway.

It has been at least a week since he’s showered. Maybe more. Probably more. And three days since he last ate, but actually six because he couldn’t imagine that Kora would look at the two protein bars he ate three days ago and call it sufficient. In fact, he was pretty sure she’d call it very insufficient.

But what Kora thought doesn’t matter, because Kora’s dead, Jim knows it, and that’s that. _Kaiidth_ , Spock would say. _What is, is._ Spock’s words make a lot more sense now than they did on Vulcan. Maybe it’s simply the time and the distance that exists between then and now, or maybe it’s everything that makes up the time and the distance, and not simply the existence of the two.

But either way, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s his birthday, Jim is twenty one years old, and he’s standing seven steps away from his back porch and he can’t see his feet in the snow and the blood from the gaping cuts in his upper arms has ran down his arms and is dripping off his fingers into the snow. He closes his eyes, and tilts his head back, feeling the first of another wave of snowflakes hit his face, and slowly exhales.


End file.
